On gifts and photography
Engagement party, Richmond
I was at an engagement party on the weekend. I brought my camera because I thought it might be nice to take a few photos for the couple. When I told my friend this he said that the priority was that I just have a good time. It was a nice party, I did have a good time, and I took a couple of pictures. Gifts – photography or otherwise – can escalate into obligations. David Graeber tells a story about two Icelandic Viking-Poets. The younger one takes a gift to the older one’s house one day – a beautiful shield. When the older Viking-Poet arrives home he finds this wonderful object and asks around to find out who’d left it for him, when he discovers who it was he says something like “oh I suppose he expects me to write some kind of poem celebrating his generosity, to hell with it, I’ll just kill him.”
I want the photography to avoid this feeling of obligation, not only because I don’t want it to feel like a chore for me, but also because without the expectation, when we only get it right once in a while, when we capture a little bit of magic, it feels like something so much more.
The best camera is the one you shoot
Home, on a Sunday
When I started at uni I wanted to take photos of the new people I was meeting — I’d spent the last few years of high school taking photos all the time — but I felt self conscious. When I meet someone new I don’t know how they will feel about me pulling out a camera and taking their photo. The photos I want to take require people to relax around me, and the camera, to let me take their photo as they are, whatever they’re doing. It’s intimate and collaborative. Eventually the solution I came up with was to start shooting on this old family Voigtländer. It is a beautitful and interesting camera, and when I would take it out of my bag people would be curious. It felt unobtrusive and it felt like we were already collaborating. I remember getting the first roll back and people liking the photos — as naff as it may sound it was gratifying when people started to upload them as their facebook profile pictures. The photos built a layer of trust; people felt you took photos of them in the way they saw themselves or the way they wanted to be seen so next time you pulled out a camera they were happy to see it. For me there was always something magical about that first roll I shot with the Voigtländer, and it freed me to take other photos. I could have shot it on any camera — the trepidation was in my head, but where else trepidation live anyway?
Mary Ellen Mark
Home, on a Sunday
I’ve been looking at this book of Mary Ellen Mark photographs. One thing I like about these compositions is how she uses the corners of her frame. To me, it is as if there were often two photographs happening at once. When I see the girl jumping over the fence I am torn; do I follow her down to the ground or do I move up with the boys. When I look at the photo of the little girl, dressed up with her USA flags, is she my subject or is it the framed picture on the wall and knick knacks on the writing desk. Again, while the family is asleep do I look at the girl or the bedside table. It is how we meet the world; an expanse of visual information and the pressure to choose where to look. Her photographs don’t end at the framelines. They expand out into imagination.
Martin Parr said he was creating a fiction out of reality
Beach box, Mount Martha
This photo is my small tribute to the late Martin Parr. From inside the beach box I exposed for a rich, saturated beach but lit up the interior with a small flash. This gives the image an odd effect. Your eye is, for a moment, confused. There’s a frame within the frame; is the beach a painting on the wall? The scene on the beach is full of moments you could image as Martin Parr photos: the women with the bright pink inflatable; the dinghy in the foreground of the yacht; and perhaps best of all the young, red-headed, fair-skinned boy who’s fallen asleep in the centre of the frame exposed to the sun, you can picture old Marty with his ring-flash getting the image of the raw, pink skin and the blissfully unaware boy about to wake up and learn a lesson.
On the occasion of a new year, new web log
12.01AM, New Year’s Day, Yarraville
For the new year I’m going to try and write something each week. In part, I’d like to get better at taking photos and be more specific in my thinking about what makes a photograph good, but mostly I’d like to improve my writing. I’ve taken photos for 15 years, I might have taken 100,000 photos. One day I realised they’d gotten better, I didn’t try and get better – over time I just knew where to stand or when to wait. The more you do something the better you’ll get. There’s that thing about a monkey and a typewriter and a thousand years to write Hamlet – I don’t know the monkey would write Hamlet but I’m sure it would be a better typist.