Some time after 2005, I photographed this caravan park that was being remodelled into something more modern.
As I work my way though my colour negative archive I’m rediscovering work. Long forgotten and seen now with fresh eyes, having seemingly more impact.
I may have even photographed around the park before its remodelling.
It’s rare that I get so many “keepers” from one or two rolls of film, of course not having looked at the images for more than a decade might have something to do with it.
A giant waste bin dominates the park
Flowers cling on desperately while all around is chaos
Neat piles
Untidy piles
Space…
An evacuation point
More plant life hanging on for grim life
The almost complete new admin building
The original admin building with the silos in the background
Desolate
Tape and pies, demarcating something
A pile soon to be burned of removed
Here’s a digital image made near the caravan park before demolition had begun. Taken in 2005. Look closely at the background and you’ll see several vans still in place and part of the fence.
A drosscape in Sunshine, former caravan park seen in the background.
Television and I have a long complicated relationship.
We were only able to afford black and white televisons as I grew up. By the time I had moved out I still couldn’t justify the cost of a new colour TV so bought second hand ones for many years. By the time I was in a ‘commited relationship’ we aquired a discarded colour TV. Eventually at some point after, we bought a small colour TV.
In the interim however, for many years I was either too busy or studying to really engage in any serious TV watching. Often it was the late night rock and roll video show called Rage on the ABC that garnered the most attention from me.
At some point while studying my undergraduate degree, I decide to record some programming then take into the Video editing suites to take stills from it. Late one night I stumbled upon a film starring Tom Waits, called Big Time as well. It was a TV adaption of a live performance based on the album of the same name. Those pictures have been in my archive relativley unseen. Now that I have a scanner I can share them with the world.
Here’s a screengrab of them loosely organised in Neofinder. At some point I will sequence them and either publish them as a Zine or just make a gallery online.
screengrab of the TV stills I made in the late 1990s using film a tripod and a video editing suite
Now of course screens dominate my life. I often sit watching the things that interest me on free to air TV, while using at least 1 or 2 devices to do other things while the ads are on.
The show entitled ‘Sheet’ is a collection of work by photographers who use sheet film to make images.
XYZPhotogallery is open Winter time (standard) Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Sunday 1:00-5:00pm (last entry) and is at 312/757 Bourke St Docklands 3008 Vic [Entry on Batmans Hill Drive
I have uncovered the negs that I shot while on my big 1998 road trip. All 5×4 inch film, I’m surprised at how little of it I shot?
5×4 film shot of Port Augusta circa 1998Desert and scrub somewhere between Whyalla and Broken Hill circa 1998Whyalla Steelworks with the bay in the background circa 1998Whyalla has a tennis court sport complex, circa 1998Desert Landscape somewhere between Whyalla and Broken Hill, circa 1998
I have been busy the last few days getting my prints ready for my next upcoming exhibition.
The Exhibition entitled ‘Thanks Pandemic’ consists of 24 silver gelatin prints framed and matted.
All up the print finishing took about 12 hours. I don’t recollect how long the actual printing took, as it was done some time ago during several of the lockdowns that Victoria endured from 2020 to 2022.
These lockdowns were the catalyst for me to revisit my archive and print some images that I have always wanted to print. Now with time on my side and changes to materials I was able to produce a series of prints that reflect my skills and knowledge. Basically I like to make work with long tonal scales. This is made possible by using 2 filters under the enlarger, the 00 filter and the 5 filter, from Ilford’s filter pack. Using this technique enables finer control over shadows, midtones and highlights.
After the prints are made they undergo treatment for archival permanence using a 2 bath fixer system and using some dilute selenium toner. In this case it was 1:19 for 3 minutes in the selenium.
My toning setup, I’m using selenium toner 1:19 for 3 minutes
Then into my archival wash tub for one hour. My tub holds 10 prints so I had to undertake this process in 3 batches, 2 at 10 and one at 5 prints. They are then hung to dry in my darkroom.
My archival print washing setup, washed 10 silver gelatin prints at a time
Next I flatten the prints in a warm heat press.
Once they are all flat, I begin the final stages of preparation for matting.
Flattened prints ready for over matting
This involves making paper corners, 100 in total, then attaching the prints to a backing board that is hinged to the matt. All made using paper archival tape.
Archival paper corners, I made 100 of these.
Once the components are assembled the frame is reassembled and the protective corners replaced. Then they are stored ready for transport to the gallery.
A print matted and secured to the backing board, ready for the final touches to make it exhibition ready.
This body of work is going to use a mixture of frame colours 9 silver 9 off-white and 6 black. How they are how together will be determined once the work is in the space.
All the prints ready for transport to the gallery next week.
Washing fibre based paper prints in my home made print washer
I’m having a solo exhibition soon.
Here are the details.
The show is entitled ‘Thanks Pandemic’. The exhibition consists of 25 silver gelatine prints printed in my darkroom. It is on display at the Hunt Club Community Arts Centre, 775 Ballarat Road, Deer Park, VIC 3023, from the 7th of October until the 8th of December. An opening celebration will occur on Friday the 7th of October from 6:30 to 8:00pm.
Circa 1989, St.Albans 19 x 19 cm silver gelatin print. Printed 2021
Today was the beginning of the term break for me as I only work 3 days a week now. I managed to procrastinate online all morning. I fitted in some quality time in my darkroom after lunch though. I have a solo exhibition application in the works. So if I’m accepted into the space I want to have plenty of time to make the best quality prints I can. The negatives span more than 30 years of shooting film and are mostly images that I have liked for and of themselves. But may not have fitted in with other series and bodies of work I exhibited in the past.
It’s a bit weird working with such old negatives. I started in my first year of University with a Mamiya medium format TLR camera. I used Microdol-X as my developer in those days. I now use a Hasselblad as my main medium format camera. Recently switched to Xtol too, a commercial developer also by Kodak. Prior to switching I had used a home made developer called D25. I’m still using the same film though, Kodak T-max 400.
Papers too, have changed radically since 1989 when I was at University. Now most papers are multi-contrast as opposed to graded. This is actually a good thing as I feel I can eke more out of a negative using the 2 extreme filters, 00 and 5. A technique called ‘split filter printing’.
I hope then to better match my expectations of an image using the split filter printing system, and a variety of home made paper developers. Compared to my University days, when a neg may have been put aside due to it not being able to printed well on a single grade of paper.
The differences between cameras and eras seems noticeable. The developer not so much. I switched film developers mainly for environmental reasons but technique also played a part in that decision too. I touched base with an old teacher a couple of summers back and he suggested the change.
The weird part is as I’m not really working to a fixed time frame, I have all the time in the world to muck around as I make each print. Some are just “falling” out of the enlarger, others are requiring many test strips and prints. I plan on exhibiting about 14 to 18 prints. Pinned directly to the walls of the gallery.
I have applied to the Sunshine Community Arts Space for another solo show in 2022.
Here are some images that formed part of the application and potentially part of the exhibition.
The images form part of a larger archive and at one level are simply images I’ve always connected to, but not actually printed to exhibit in the past.
Like the last solo show in 2019, these prints will be small about 18 cms square. However this time I am not framing, just pinning, to the wall.
Glen & Les near the You Yangs about 1990Swamp under the Westgate Bridge about 1989Outside the National Gallery in Canberra, in about 1993A view from Melbourne looking east atop a skyscraper around 1990
The work comes from a place that I have been situated in since the beginning of the pandemic. Relying mainly on my archives and my darkroom. I initially set out to make a small artist book, using contact printed negs. This process lead me to realise I could make a small solo show or two from the images I collated. All up I looked at over 539 medium format contact sheets from 1988 to 2021. The first edit for the book culled this down to about 80 images. This was too many for the book I had planned. The excess images may then make up several solo exhibitions.
Beijing Silvermine is an archive of 850 000 negatives salvaged over the last ten years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing. Assembled by the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin, Beijing Silvermine offers a unique photographic portrait of the Chinese capital and the life of its inhabitants in the decade following the Cultural Revolution.
