Tragicocomedia

Have been enthusiastically photographing architecture again, some of which is reflected here. Equally, it must be said, I remain enthusiastic about photographing people – but it’s been nice for the last week to step away from the 200mm lens and keep things at bay. I’ve included some older photographs in this collection, which is really a sort of latter day enthusiasm for summer. Lately the weather has been lovely and crisp – a perfect March of mild heat and cool shadows, with now some extra bite. Going to the beach quite a lot recently has been very uplifting and generally everything seems positive. I suppose that too is reflected here, which is indicative of a softer, happier mood. Go well!

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I went back and had another look at the photographs I took on the afternoon of the Chinese New Year parade in Sydney and found quite a number I’d overlooked. Once I began editing them, I realised they would comprise quite a sizeable collection and decided to publish them together. In the end I was very happy with this collection of portraits. There certainly are a lot of characters out there, and somehow it gives me faith in humanity that each person truly is an individual. I wish I had stayed for the parade.

Best wishes all, and happy Chinese New Year (if very belated)

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This is a somewhat random collection of not especially great shots, but rather  a bunch of curiosities and vignettes. The amusing, everyday and grotesque seem to abound wherever I look and I’ve just been snapping really, rather than working the lens a great deal. I’d love to have more time to plan shoots and go for specific targets and themes, but instead I’ve just been carting the camera about and flinging it at whatever crossed my path. Hopefully the next collection won’t be quite so random and lacking in striking images, but for now, this serves well as a sort of photo diary of recent encounters, discoveries and moments. Stay well peeps!

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Here are a selection of photographs from my first paid job. It was a fun evening – the Weight Watchers Slimmer of the Year awards, or something along those lines – held at Doltone House in Sydney Harbour, near Jackson’s Landing. As the event was already being photographed and videoed by other people, my job was to prowl around the edges and take more candid, arty photographs of the event. I worked pretty hard throughout the evening and didn’t stop shooting for almost four hours, during which time I took around 900 images. From those I ultimately selected roughly ninety for the final package and edited them in a seven-hour spree that very night, staying up until dawn, oddly zealous about finishing the job.

The photographs featured here are those which I liked the most from the evening, with perhaps a few too many of the Fijian musicians!

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I recently attended the OUTPOST street art and graffiti exhibition on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. I had never actually been to Cockatoo Island before and was very impressed by the ways in which this former industrial site is being utilised. It makes for an excellent exhibition space, as well as a good venue for festivals, concerts and the like. The timing of this seemed surprisingly appropriate, as it comes shortly after my having developed more of an interest in contemporary street art around Sydney. I recall a few years ago a friend from Melbourne lamenting the lack of stencil art and other, more creative and, indeed, political forms of street art in Sydney. Whilst Melbourne may still be ahead on this front, Sydney has certainly taken to stencil art and there seems to be a greater diversity of styles of graffiti generally, many of which are immediately recognisable as belonging to particular artists.

I must confess that I’m hopeless on the attribution front. I should take more of an interest in the artists themselves, yet seem to have a blind-spot for tags and signatures on murals, which all too often are left out of the composition when I take a photograph. Perhaps it’s time to reintroduce the old photographer’s notebook.

The other current point of fascination is shop windows, both on account of their content and their reflections, but also a combination of the two. It’s nice to have an almost-human subject that does not move, just as it is equally nice to be surprised by the unexpected rhythms of human motion.

Then, of course, there is the hottest topic of the summer: The weather.

The rain has kept on coming and the many lovers of summer seem baffled. I suppose sunshine is the predominant narrative of Australia, in much the same way that the bush and, subsequently, the beach, has dominated Australian identity. These are all narratives that I have, at various times, embraced and rejected with equal enthusiasm. After a pale and indoor childhood of nerdy pursuits, I finally took an interest in outdoor activities with the arrival of puberty. By the summers of 1991-93, I went to the beach almost five days a week. From December 1995 to late April, 1996, I lived at Bronte and swam at the beach pretty well every day. Soon after this, my excitement about summer began to wane. In 1997, after a five and a half month trip around Europe, I returned to a more bookish, autumnal and wintry mood. This despite an undercurrent of yearning, almost poetic in character, inspired by Lawrence of Arabia, for a desert aesthetic: I painted my Glebe apartment a combination of sky blue and pale desert sand.

When I lived in England from 1999 to 2003, I craved the beach, hot weather and sunshine. I remember enthusing, with my good friend Chris, about “stinkers” – really disgustingly hot days that began very hot indeed. If anyone can recall New Year’s Day 2006, when it was 38 by 0800AM and ultimately hit 46 centigrade, then you know what I’m talking about. Stuff died. People died. Yet once my time in England was through, I realised how little of a sop the hot weather and beaches of Australia were, compared to the urban centres, archaeological sites, museums, galleries, and indeed, more mountainous landscape of Europe. Since then I’ve hardly gone to the beach at all, despite enjoying it every time I do. Unless a lift is on offer, getting there seems more hassle than it’s worth. Without the beach, summer is almost entirely redundant, with the exception of a dimly flickering interest in the outcome of the seasonal cricket tests…

So, we’ve been privy to plenty of rain, plenty of incredible cloud formations, plenty of slick, wet streets and almost endemic umbrella use. Not a day goes by where I don’t check the radar from the meteorological bureau to see how best to prepare. I’m people will curse me for wishing so, but I do hope the summer continues as is; anything to spare me from the horrors of humid February!

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So, the rainiest and coolest start to summer for years continues. Perhaps I’m mistaken, as even last year was a very wet and variable summer, yet I don’t recall such unseasonal weather since January 2000, when I returned from Cambridge for a three and half week “reality check.” Reality didn’t check out, incidentally, and I was rather pleased to be back in England in the end.

I do feel a little perverse in celebrating this weather and acknowledge that most people love sunshine and warmth. I too love sunshine and warmth, within reason, though I used to love it a whole lot more. When I first moved to the UK in September 1999, I felt a quite incredible longing for the summer on which I was missing out, one of the principal reasons for my reality check. After some time in England I began to adjust and came to realise that there is no such thing as “bad weather.” If asked to define it, however, my inclination would not be to say rain and grey skies, but unbearable heat and humidity. The cold I can do something about, and in England, it’s not even really that cold, but when it’s sticky and forty degrees and I can’t go to work nude, life sucks. So long as it isn’t hostile, and generally I find heat more hostile than cold, and so long as I can achieve a level of comfort, the weather is welcome to do its own thing.

In truth, for me, weather is all about aesthetics, mood and comfort. The wet sheen of freshness that rain brings; the cool crispness of a mild autumn or spring day; the bracing chill that presages a frost; the sheets of ice on roadside puddles; the tendrils of cold across window glass; the eternal wonder of snow; the patter of rain on a roof; the electric, bruise-hued sky of a thunderstorm; the surreal clarity of a rich blue sky, the massed clouds of a rolling weather-front… There is so much pleasure to be had from interesting weather, such a range of moods and themes to indulge, such wonderful sights to see. I could watch and listen to rain all day and not get bored; waking up to a downpour seems even more beautiful than dancing sunshine, and lately, there have been many downpours indeed.

And so, above is another collection of photographs: some heavy skies, some graffiti art, sunsets, architecture, people – the usual subjects. One of these photos I consider to be the best I’ve taken for a while, namely, that titled “Watchful”, from the sculpture by the sea exhibition. The fortunate arrangement of the figures around the great conceit of a gigantic tap was a very lucky strike indeed. Either way, you be the judge, and for now I shall sign off.

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