I am an observational photographer. I use my camera as a tool to create messages against injustice where my subjects show a message hidden within plain sight.
Subliminal Activism
An aboriginal man stepping over spray painted communication symbols in the rain. Turned upside down it becomes a comment on indigenous people living in contemporary Australia. 40,000 plus years of culture and now expected to assimilate at light speed.
It appears as a beautiful, calm child looking out at the world through a tiny portal in her place of detention - it is in fact the valve on a freight train passing through a goods yard at Newcastle harbour in NSW. The shutter speed is low and the camera is fixed so the moving train appears a little blurry while the barbed wire remains as sharp as it is in real life. The motion blur creates the illusion of a child within the utilitarian valve, and simultaneously doubles as a metaphor for the transitory nature of global child refugees to which this illusion attempts to represent. The blue is the ocean to be traversed to reach the island continent of Australia and the horizontal lines on the surface behind the barbed wire are the formal queues for registered immigration a fleeing refugee has scant time for.
Distorted TV images of the 1st presidential debate I was watching in Australia, (caused by wind moving the antenna) epitomise the overbearing and interruptive style of Donald Trump. These images are unique despite being transmitted globally as the resulting pixelated and blurred image was in itself unique to this moment in time and this television. At this stage it was assumed Hillary Clinton would win, with these images now showing an unexpected prescience. These 3 images were taken in a 3 second period – 3 portraits showing the merging of one candidate into the other.
Distorted TV images of the 1st presidential debate I was watching in Australia, (caused by wind moving the antenna) epitomise the overbearing and interruptive style of Donald Trump. These images are unique despite being transmitted globally as the resulting pixelated and blurred image was in itself unique to this moment in time and this television. At this stage it was assumed Hillary Clinton would win, with these images now showing an unexpected prescience. These 3 images were taken in a 3 second period – 3 portraits showing the merging of one candidate into the other.
Distorted TV images of the 1st presidential debate I was watching in Australia, (caused by wind moving the antenna) epitomise the overbearing and interruptive style of Donald Trump. These images are unique despite being transmitted globally as the resulting pixelated and blurred image was in itself unique to this moment in time and this television. At this stage it was assumed Hillary Clinton would win, with these images now showing an unexpected prescience. These 3 images were taken in a 3 second period – 3 portraits showing the merging of one candidate into the other.
The fragmented face of a young girl on a TV screen epitomises the short attention span encouraged by mainstream media by their aggressive promotion of advertisements repeated within minutes of each other.
The textures of a weathered painted wall in Hoi An, Vietnam presents a colourful abstract image, however, looking further one can see faces expressing past horrors looming from the image. Hoi An is only a few kms away from Da Nang, the city where the US troops landed in the Vietnam War.
The preservation of the ancient Terracotta Warriors uses plastic sheeting to protect the newly exposed lacquer from disintegrating, giving the heads a ghostly look as if they have more to say, rather than the intended use of restoration.
The preservation of the ancient Terracotta Warriors uses plastic sheeting to protect the newly exposed lacquer from disintegrating, giving the heads a ghostly look as if they have more to say, rather than the intended use of restoration.
