roadtrip to Balranald, NSW
In a couple of days I am off on a roadtrip to Balranald in NSW for a winter photocamp with Gilbert Roe. I need to make some photos for the forthcoming exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in February 2019. I am squeezing the roadtrip inbetween finishing working on the photos for the SALA festival exhibition and the opening of the actual exhibition with Stuart Murdoch on the 3rd August at the… Read More
Lake Boga photo-camp
The exhibition at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery has finished, and Gilbert Roe and I decided to add on a photo-camp at Lake Boga when we picked up our prints from the gallery. The photo-camp, even for a few days, would allow us to explore the Mallee region around Swan Hill, and to build on the new beginnings that had we had either briefly scoped or seen whilst we were in Swan Hill… Read More
new beginnings
The post’s title new beginnings refers to me starting to scope work for the 2018 section of the Mallee Routes project whilst I was at Swan Hill for the exhibition at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery. This is new work for the upcoming group exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in early 2019. I want to present new work that has been made during 2018, rather than old… Read More
topographic photography + trauma
Can trauma be connected to a topographic approach to photographing the Mallee? I have been mulling over this whilst I put the Mallee Routes project aside for a month or so, so that I could work on the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book, which is to be produced by Adam Dutkiewicz and myself for Moon Arrow Press in 2018. The Adelaide Photography project has been kickstarted, as it were, and the break has been beneficial. The… Read More
In Birchip: reflections on landscape photography
This scoping photo of silos at Birchip in the Wimmera Mallee is a deadpan image of an unexpressive and repetitive subject that appears impersonal, blank and boring. It repeats the same idea–silos in the landscape— in different ways. It avoids the artistic subjectivity and narrativity represented by photojournalism. There is no event in the picture and there is little human interest.
de-population
People are leaving the countryside and moving to the more prosperous towns and cities. As young people depart, they leave small towns and hamlets of empty houses and shuttered shops, of closed schools and cafes, and a greying population.
painting the silos
One innovative representation of the Victorian Mallee that I came across whilst on the Hopetown phototrip in 2016 was the murals that were being painted on the silos throughout the Victorian north-west Mallee. One notable example was the mural on GrainCorp’s disused silo at Brim, which had been painted by the Brisbane street artist Guido van Helten in collaboration with the local community. This site has become a tourist icon in the Wimmera, judging by the number… Read More
wheat
The wheat was everywhere whilst I was on the Hopetoun road trip. I took a few 35mm snapshots of the dryland wheat fields with my old film Leica (an M4-P) whilst I was on my way back to our campsite at Hopetoun from Sea Lake. I’d been to Lake Tyrrell that afternoon to look for the remains of an old salt works butI didn’t have much luck. I just couldn’t find it. The… Read More
where photography meets philosophy
What I wanted to avoid was a melancholy interpretation; namely, photographing the Mallee was a form of nostalgic mourning for a form of life that has passed away.
Antecedents
Whilst I have been working on images to build up my digital and film galleries I have been searching for some Australian antecedents to my documentary approach to photography for the Mallee Routes project. Who has been here before? What approach to documentary photography did they take? Is there a body of work that exists in the archives? Or do the archives mostly consist of vernacular photography as the history gallery is… Read More