Tragicocomedia

Having been working in the city for the last three and a half years, first on Castlereagh Street and, since last October, George Street, I’ve developed something of a love-hate relationship with the place. It is, in its own way, rather ugly at times; crowded, noisy, busy and dotted with blackened gum. Along Pitt Street, the monorail sits like stitches on a sore, old wound; its pylons covered with grime and the ill-fitting papier maché of advertisements. In other places, the smog-darkened concrete, the dusty marble cladding, the spattered glass of the many tired, generic buildings, looms above the pavement. There are places where the skyline is boxy and dull, where contrasting architectural ambitions sit like class warfare writ large. There are places where aesthetics have not had a look in; where the roller-doors and security grills guard the crooked shopfronts that wear their clashing colours like bad fashion.

Yet there are also places where aesthetics have won out. Viewed from the Botanic Gardens, the skyline is certainly something to behold. Tall and impressively weightless, the more thoughtful and picturesque designs of architects like Renzo Piano give the city a distinctly timeless modernity. The clean sheen of the newly renovated Pitt Street Mall is a congenial oasis amidst the traffic-huddled streets. The open view of St Mary’s across Hyde Park is genuinely grandiose; the trees and fountains of this expanse, the pool of reflection, the long avenues under the canopy, all offer respite. The Art Gallery, the Gardens and Domain are arguably outside the CBD, yet so close as to have a very intrinsic relationship with it and give direct refuge from it.

Inside, behind the facades, beneath the pavements, countless holes in the wall offer a range of snacks and diversions. In these places in particular, the Asian-ification of Sydney moves apace. From Town Hall down to Railway Square, and even beyond, from Elizabeth Street down to Sussex Street, the dominance of Asian shops and business is very apparent. A whole range of new Korean and Japanese restaurants have opened in the last few years; along with ever more shops selling foreign groceries, Asian fashions, accessories and trinkets. The expansion of Chinatown might be commercially driven, yet it is also a cultural phenomenon that reflects the growth of one of the few true communities that inhabit the CDB. Personally, I see it as a great improvement. The new life downtown is not only far better than the empty wasteland of two decades ago, it has made the slummy end of the city centre truly exotic.

There is also a powerfully vibrant energy to the city. The old, carpeted pubs that hang on the corners from Park Street down to Central; the Windsor, the Criterion, the Coronation, the Edinburgh Castle, The Sir John Young, The Century Tavern, Stratton’s Hotel, all these places fill in the late afternoons and spill their noise and patrons onto the streets. It all seems, at times, rather cheap and tawdry; very lowest common denominator, tasteless and with little attention to detail, yet the pubs, the take-aways, the convenience stores, the internet dens, the gaming parlours, the multiplex, the discount fashion shops, the bubble tea and Ramen joints, the hairdressers and dry-cleaners, all give this end of town an exciting buzz.

The city does indeed make an interesting subject, and every day, when I get off the bus at Town Hall, it feels like being right in the middle of the mayhem. The buskers, homeless people, charity fundraisers, shoppers, students, suits, service staff, all mill about, busily doing either something or nothing. It’s oddly thrilling, if rather disappointingly unattractive. Still, such is life!

These photos, of course, don’t necessarily reflect all mentioned above. They are mostly taken downtown, but there are also some from Newtown and Glebe, and a couple from a very good Hallowe’en party. But still, I had to write something! Enjoy.

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I never expected to see a rainbow zebra when I rounded the corner into Castlereagh Street. Yet, there it was, splendid and radiant, standing before two more conventional black and white zebras. For a brief moment I was minded of the term “acid flashback”, but in truth, I recall no rainbow zebras during prior encounters with LSD, so figured these were new kids in town. What surprised me most of all, however, was that they should be painted on the wall of Stratton’s Hotel; a rather old school pub – not without rustic charm – married to a youth hostel. Indeed, as the local pub of JET English College, before we moved to George Street, it had obtained some small regard and was affectionately known as “Strap-ons”.

Still, it was, in effect, the jug-swilling haunt of city office workers – not the rummest of crowds, nor entirely uncongenial, given sufficient rope – and not a place I pictured festooned with imagery that was, at least somewhat, psychedelic. So, the good news is that Strap-ons has tripped out and Sydney is now home to a small population of zebras, who are, I think, seriously cool (featured below). What is perhaps even cooler is the portrait of the woman on the wall opposite, across the little laneway. The style of the artist, particularly with regard to the features, suggests to me that it is the same painter who did the walls in the back garden of Sappho Books in Glebe.

Anyways, here is another collection of photographs from the last ten days or so. I didn’t set out with any particular purpose in mind, though most of these shots were taken whilst actively seeking shots. I’m just never quite sure where I’m going to look next and tend to wander about. In accordance with this habit of drifting, I’m including a couple of snippets from poems I was sorting through a short while ago. They are meandering and prone to non-sequiturs, but there you have it.

So, reading through Olympos again – named after a city in southern Turkey, not Greece – I had very visceral memory of the scuff and feel of ancient floors and realised how desperately I miss walking around archaeological sites. As a means by which to study architecture, ponder the eternal verities, take good photographs, have a picnic, get a tan, feel awed and privileged, there are few better activities. The poem commences with a rather forced evocation of Roman interiors and the city itself. The Italicised section of the poem below is actually the translation (not mine) of a funereal inscription from the archaeological site at Olympos. The site is quite impressively overgrown with forest and spreads through the trees, a short walk from a wide, glorious beach. I recommend a visit! As to the poems, they’re just here to be thought provoking : )

Olympos

Pompeian rooms, dusty, buckled

reliquaries, shuffle and scuff

with emptiness. The Augusta’s

triclinium, frescoed with tired

fruit garlands…

In Trajan’s market sparse is the jink

and shout of a once gnashing trade.

While, against the sky, the Colosseum,

rings with the horns of traffic.

The ship sailed into the harbour last

and anchored to leave no more.

No longer was there any hope

from the daylight or the wind.

After the light carried by the dawn

had left, Captain Eudemos

there buried the ship; with a life

as short as a day like a broken wave.

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Dresden

Dresden wears its patches like a man

showing a piece of skull

he was lucky to live through losing.

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In more ways than one, I’ve been trying very hard to get back into Sydney. Not only as a place to live, work and enjoy myself, but also as a photographic subject.

Sydney is certainly a lot more fun these days. Despite the inability to purchase decent ecstasy anywhere in Australia, the countless new bars that have opened in the last few years since the licensing laws were changed has made the place a hell of a lot more livable.

The city also looks a lot better thanks to a great deal of inner-city gentrification and the completion of prestige developments and re-developments. This process really began back in the late nineties with the first efforts to beautify the city centre in preparation for the 2000 Olympics; widening and repaving pavements, replacing lighting, redirecting traffic flow, planting hundreds more trees and generally cleaning up a lot of ugly crap. The property boom of the mid to late 90s not only saw the filling in of the many unsightly holes left by projects which stalled in the 89/90 recession, but also attracted architects such as Renzo Piano and Norman Foster to the city. Anyone who remembers the ugliness of the CBD before this process began will no doubt be thankful for the transformation – perhaps with the exception of Darling Harbour, an overdeveloped nightmare. At the start of the 90s, almost no one actually lived in the city centre, and the chances of finding a supermarket or convenience store were next to none. Now it is a vibrant place that is alive with people in the small hours – for better or for worse. Irrespective of one’s opinion of the nature of the activities, the type of culture that has emerged, or the calibre of the people dwelling in the city, it is far better in its living incarnation, than the dead and, let’s face it, dangerous place it used to be.

Of course, the unfortunate upshot of all this investment and development was skyrocketing rents. This phenomenon, however, is by no means a necessary consequence of the improvement and renovation of public spaces, but rather it is driven by the selfish habit of Australians to speculate on property and buy for the sake of investment rather than to secure a home in which to live.

But I digress, for I came here to talk about taking photographs. Recently, I’ve been trying to get back into shooting this city, which, for a few years left me quite cold. The problem often lay in knowing where to start and why. What is most interesting about the place? The people, the geography, the architecture? I generally find people to be the most interesting subjects in any place, but in a modern, cosmopolitan western city, are they in any way different to those of other such cities? Sydney certainly has many diverse subcultures and scenes; inner city hipsters, inner westies, surfies, bogans, cashed-up bogans, office-workers, city professionals, winers and diners, foreign students, clubbers, surfies, grommits, beach-bums, goths, westies, rev-heads, fixies, transvestites, swing dancers, wanna-be latinos, hip-hoppers, theatre-goers, glamour-pusses, café-crawlers, jocks, hoons, thugs, prats, geeks, gits, princesses and parasites, and everywhere, the disconnected, disjointed, unemployed and homeless. It’s difficult to know where to start, and occasionally they’re all thrown together in the endlessly fascinating, chaotic and democratic mess of places like George Street or the Pitt Street Mall, where most will venture at some point, whether they like it or not.

George Street, despite its relative ugliness, is not a bad place to start because of its mix of characters. The area around Town Hall in particular is, without wishing to be too disparaging, a magnet for freaks. Along much of the length of George Street, however, it is not an easy place to shoot. The subjects are many and diverse, but outside of midday, when the sun is overhead, or in the late afternoon, when, for example, the towers of World Square reflect the setting sun onto the pavements, this north / south canyon is in shadow. I’ve spent many hours hanging around on the pavement in George Street and in Chinatown, but with mixed results. Frankly, I’m a little tired of the place. There are, of course, more obvious and picturesque subjects; the prestige buildings, the harbour, the beaches, but they either have a magazine neatness and sterility, or a clichéd obviousness about them that ultimately leaves me unsatisfied. It’s nice enough to catch a good sunset around the Opera House, but without a unique and curious foreground subject, it all feels a tad pointless and touristic.

Often the best strategy is to head out with no expectations and shoot whatever seems interesting. I’ve been trying to do this recently, but again it’s difficult to know where to start, nor in which direction to walk once having started. There are the various “villages” of Sydney; Balmain, Leichhardt, Surry Hills, Erskineville and Glebe to name a few, yet unless some spectacular combination of light, weather, subject and drama occurs, seemingly by random, they can come up rather boringly flat. Without access to a car, it is difficult to go further afield at the drop of a hat. It would be nice to spend some time in places like Lakemba, Strathfield, Ashfield, Cabramatta, Blacktown or Liverpool, which have their own particular ethnic concentrations, but I haven’t quite managed it yet. Perhaps I’ve simply been unlucky in the last few years in Sydney, for surely any old place will do, provided one is fortunate in witnessing some utterly random and unpredictable ballet of chance elements. Who knows quite where a fight will occur, a car crash, or a wedding spill onto the street? I’ve learned many times that the planned and deliberately targeted subjects can give the most disappointing results. The key element is, more often than not, having time and mobility at your disposal and stumbling upon an event or play of light.

So what exactly am I banging on about? Basically, that Sydney, a city which ought to provide a diverse range of subjects, is proving disappointingly difficult to shoot at the moment. I’m not sure if it’s me, my choice of locations, my failure to make the most of good subjects, or the fact that the subjects are not that interesting to me. Having been spoiled in places like India, Vietnam and Cambodia in the last few years, where the people and backdrops were so fascinating in themselves as to bring a photograph alive, I sometimes wonder if the people of Sydney are just too intrinsically dull to be worth shooting.  Inside my head is a frustrated photographer shouting “Come on, do something! Dance for me!” only, much of the time they seem just to be walking on down the street minding their own business and looking any old bunch of westerners. I wish they’d do something ever so slightly theatrical or curious more often.

One thing I which continually frustrates me is cars. Oh man, cars! Grrr. My intense dislike of the things is always significantly enhanced whenever out on a shoot. Not only are most cars ugly, misshapen lumps, with so little thought put into their aesthetics, sacrificed no doubt in favour of aerodynamics, but they are quite simply everywhere. It’s almost impossible to find a street without the hideous things parked all along its length. They block views and make it nigh impossible to shoot from a low angle across a pavement. They are continually trying to steal the show by driving past, sitting in the field of vision, sticking their ugly noses, bald pates and shiny foreheads into shots. How much finer streets would look without them!

In some places the strata laws dictate that people cannot hang their washing out on balconies, nor drape clothes over railings, in order to maintain a boringly sterile appearance. Clothes, however, add colour and individuality; they flutter, create shadow and movement, they can have both a simple homely, domestic quality, or a diaphanous beauty. Cars, however, are almost universally hideous. In my ideal world they should all be hidden away in garages, or not kept at all. Antique vehicles, in which form seemed more important than function, might just get a look in, but the average modern car has all the attractiveness of a fridge with wheels. Put simply, I detest cars. They pollute, they kill, they’re awfully noisy, and they are responsible for ruining thousands and thousands of photographs the world over.

But again, I digress… And so, of late, I’ve been wandering about trying to catch some interesting shots, with varying degrees of success. I’ve had some success with workers before, especially in some of the more graphic and gruesome industries – meat-markets, fish-markets, industrial workers, construction sites – and perhaps this is where I need to direct my energies. I’ve thought about heading into more clubs and bars, yet these people are well enough documented in publications like TheThousands and the social pages of the Sunday rags, and I don’t think we need more photographs of hipsters and clubbers. Having said that, why am I kidding myself that anyone needs more photographs of anything?

Anyways, I have already ranted far too much on this subject. Here are some more recent shots, along with a few not so recent ones, from the last three years.

Have a nice day!

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It’s been a while since I took my camera out with me regularly, just as it’s been a while since I wrote a lot of poetry. Between 2003 and 2007, there was a period when I never left home without my camera. I had carted a little film number around for years, but things really picked up with the purchase of my first digital at Stansted airport for a trip to Venice in February 2003, en route to Rome, where I was living at the time. It was a sexy and very portable 3.2 megapixel Minolta with a 3x zoom and a wholly inadequate chip, c. 100 meg – I really can’t remember, though I do still have the thing in a drawer somewhere, its circuit board fried in Gatorade. It was a wonderful camera and the sheer delight with which I pointed it at things cannot be overstated.

In 2004, back in Australia, I really thought I’d hit the big time when I upgraded to a 4 megapixel 10x zoom Olympus, purchased en route to New Zealand. I loved that camera, and dreamed of seeing it displayed in a glass case in the Museum of Me, which I intended to build in the megalomaniac bachelor future to which I’ve since abandoned looking forward. Irrespective of the future existence of said museum, my father’s forgetful abandonment of the camera in a bottleshop in Prague in 2008 has rather put paid to these plans. Still, it took some magnificent photographs of which I remain very proud and which now constitute the High Romantic Era of the inter-Cambridge years, also known as the first incarnation of Cornieworld: 2005-06.

Judge for yourself:

http://on.fb.me/Sydney2003-2006

This was a splendid period of endlessly seeking photographs. I often took a bus into town or hung around before and after work, looking for shots. At night I would take my tripod with me, armed with a couple of hefty bifters, and prowl the streets of Glebe in search of gold. I was especially fond of dusk, and made many a mission at this magic hour to shoot the royal blue skies that emerged in extended exposures. I tried to capture the sentiment of those times, when I was also writing an absolutely stupid amount of poetry, in an ineffectual poem, which has long since languished on the scrap heap. I include it here for its attempted evocation of the restless, and overtly melodramatic yearning that gripped me.

Late afternoon

This late afternoon’s neither open nor closed,

though most of the day is gone and I’m yet to feel

proud. I stared through the morning as through a picture

window, running an hour late for nothing

and already that sickness, that sinking.

Luncheon came with just a few short lines.

The sun on the palm flower (soft as the flesh

of a sapling stripped by a child’s

tepid inquisition) was hypnotic; milky

smooth as an albino root.

Speckled doves rattled the leaves;

dry, resounding clicks with every branch-hop.

Foliage fell, winking down the sunned backs

of traffic-hardened terraces

through mottled streaks of blaze. Come four o’clock

I’m typing into warming gold and expectation spoils

these clutched-at scraps. Calling, the low sun urges

its partisans, drives me to grab my camera for this brief

hour – hasty magic, when so far north of south.

Go shoot tired vistas, hoping copper light will tweak

their tune. I need to be three places at once: the light-

rail viaduct, the sunken ferry, the bridge

like a leggy woman pissing – that mongrel pylon

never lets me win. In the park trying to work

out how my heroes made it. One low

cloud wiggled like a swung dash across

the rending sunset; an overexposed, sylphid burlesque.

My hands already clammy with that pallor

born of going home, restless to head out again

and squeal in the interrogation of the moon.

___________________________________

In early 2006, in preparation for my return to England, I upgraded again and bought myself Canon 350D. Before leaving I carried it with me everywhere I went, including taking it to work every day, with two hefty lenses. I didn’t mind the weight of it so much, though it was bulky and awkward. I suppose I felt not a little windswept and heroic, and, armed for the first time with a 300mm lens, became quite obsessed with “sniping” people at a distance.

I’d like to think I got some grand results, and once overseas, put it to good use on many trips. Yet it was here that I also slowed in my quest. I lost the habit of taking it with me every day. I got tired of the weight and bulk of it and, increasingly, left it at home. There were certainly many bifter-fuelled missions wherein I rode my bicycle for hours on end seeking shots, and when I travelled overseas I shot like a man possessed. With less regular practice it took me a little longer to warm up, yet, when I went on holiday, I was pretty quickly inspired by the exciting subject matter and took some of my very favourite photographs in this period.

http://on.fb.me/RecentWork1

http://on.fb.me/PhotosBCornford

When I returned to Australia in 2008, I upgraded again to the Canon 450D and bought myself an L-series 200ml lens. It is this camera that I am currently using, though I would dearly love to upgrade again and spend ten grand on lenses. That megalomaniac bachelor future seems more distant than ever, though the bachelor part is, shall we say, in full swing.

And so! Having recently moved back to Glebe, to a studio from the back window of which I can see the old flat in which I wrote the above poem and where I dwelt during the High Romantic Era of the inter-Cambridge years, I have once again been inspired to write bucketloads of poetry and cart my camera about with me. It’s a wonderful feeling, as though I have returned to complete some long-unfinished business, and, so far, I’m pleased both with my output and dedication. It’s two in the morning, and really I ought to be in bed, but ABC Classical FM is having a bit of a Bach special, and after a long day of writing, conditions are ripe for hammering the keys still further.

Yet, I have digressed too far, for the purpose of this piece was merely to introduce a few photographs of a rather unique sky I spotted on Saturday afternoon. It seems almost unreasonable to be excited about these photos, considering the subject matter was presented to me complete, and by chance, and I certainly had no hand in it other than being in the right place at the right time. I had gone to Chinatown – pork buns are my weakness (sung to the tune of a certain Kate Ceberano song) – but the clouds, which later proved to be so enthralling, were a hindrance. I was hoping for conditions such as those which prevailed when I took some photos in Chinatown a while ago. Namely, these, for example:

But such was not to be. And so, I took the bus home, all bunned up as it were, and when I hopped off just past the footbridge, found myself quite mesmerised by the following:

Fingers crossed, there shall be plenty more to come. And on that note, I shall bid you good night!

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