I leave Encounter Bay tomorrow for a 5 day photocamp at Morgan in South Australia with Gilbert, even though it is a little late in the year to be photographing in the SA Mallee. I haven’t been able to get away on a phototrip to the Mallee as I’d previously planned, due to the need to kickstart the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book.
I am hoping that the weather in early November is reasonably cool (it does not get too hot), the mosquitos are few and far between and there is some cloud cover .
Though I haven’t been able to go on road trips in the Mallee during the late winter and early spring months,. I have been looking at other bodies of work that bear some kind of resemblance to Mallee Routes. One is the Desert Cantos by Richard Misrach, a significant and remarkable body of work of the deserts of the American West, begun in 1979. It is evaluated in this essay by Gerry Badger.
Another project that has cross overs with multiyear Mallee Routes is the Mojave Project. I came across this courtesy of Stu Art who came upon it whilst cruising the internet looking for material on Gregory Halpern’s Zzyzx book. The Mojave Project a fascinating, transmedia project (photographs, maps, film shorts ) that explores the history of place while also examining how the landscapes that people inhabit are culturally constructed.
What I find fascinating are Kim Stringfellow’s photographs, especially some of the landscapes.
A core difference is that Mallee Routes is very modest compared to the depth and breadth of the Mojave project, which has distinct themes and field reports involving interviews, reportage and personal journaling. A second difference is that Mallee Routes is DIY (we are on our own), whereas the Mojave Project is supported and funded by a variety of institutions, some of whom are project planners.
[…] solo walks will change tomorrow as I am off on a photo trip to the South Australia Mallee for 5 days, and so Suzanne will have to walk both dogs together and […]
[…] was very noticeable about the stretch of land around Morgan and Waikerie whilst I was at the Morgan photo camp about the stretch of land around Morgan and Waikerie was the clearing of the original mallee […]
Richard Misrach is up there with Robert Adams and Lee Freidlander as a favourite of mine. Before photobooks were a thing I obsessively collected anything I could get my hands on about or by him.
[…] I was on the Morgan photo camp in 2017 I decided to incorporate some 5×4 black and white photography into the Mallee Routes […]