Foundation Photographs 2000-2010

By the start of the new century I had burned out as a lecturer in photography. I took leave without pay at the start of 2001 and while I was on leave, packages were offered to a number of staff. I accepted. 

This ended my thirty year career as an art educator. I felt devastated and depressed and later I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

With the crazy workload imposed by the university, over the previous few years, I had lost touch with my own art practice and the ideas that I had been working with. 

So, I picked up my Linhof 4 x 5 field camera, tripod, gear and started photographing locally in the Aldgate Valley where I lived and began to reinvent myself as an artist. Spending time along the creek offered some much needed inner peace and tranquillity. The concentration involved with photography diverted my mind away from my negative thoughts and I eventually felt an evolving reconnection with myself through working again. 

Taking a photograph with a view camera on a tripod is a relatively demanding and lengthy process of technical concentration. Standing in the landscape and pointing the camera in a chosen direction ultimately leads to feelings and personal perceptions about what is there and what it is that is of particular interest. 

This group of photographs is not particularly original. There were a number of 19th and 20th century influences that cropped up as I worked. I greeted those moments, those photographers and those photographs, as something akin to a spiritual connection.

Eventually fresh ideas and some quite personal and possibly unique perceptions began to evolve. In some instances my ideas seemed too over the top and I felt vulnerable and, at times, frightened by them but I decided to follow my ideas, no matter how odd, and see where they might lead. This policy of giving myself permission to try anything, however silly 'at a rational level'. This way of working enticed me on to a variety of new paths to be explored. And over 10 years later I am still exploring!