During the transition from summer to autumn this year I started a study of clouds from the top of Rosetta Head in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. I was building on these earlier photos.
From Rosetta Head I was usually looking east north east.
The clouds were above Encounter Bay, and the photos were made in the early morning, generally before sunrise. The photo above is an example.
On Boxing Day 2020 Kayla and I went walking early as we had friends staying with us over Xmas. The early morning poodlewalk was along Bridge Terrace in Victor Harbor. We slowly made our way to the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. The ephemeral river had stopped flowing, the light was good and people were already walking along, and exercising on, the beach
I decided to take the odd photo of some of the seaside houses along Bridge Terrace as we walked by them. This older house in a grand style at no. 22 Bridge Terrace was for sale.
Would it remain after it was sold? Or would it be pulled down? I hoped that it was heritage listed as there are very examples of this old grand seaside architectural style.
I occasionally make a still life when I'm out walking with Kayla on an early morning poodlewalk. The materials used in the open studio are what I find washed up on the local beaches. This picture is a recent example of such an object:
This glass bottle with shells growing on it was lying on the sand on western edge of Depledge Beach, west of Victor Harbor. The picture opens up a world (the littoral zone) and it discloses the various elements within that world's network of interconnections. The artwork stands in a particular place and in specific relation to that which is configured around it. So argues Heidegger in his essay, 'The Origin of the Work of Art'.
The cloud formations that move across Encounter Bay around Victor Harbor are often quite dramatic.
The photos of the clouds are usually made from on top of Rosetta Head in the early morning:
The cloud shapes are constantly changing.
During the school holidays a funfair or amusement park is set up near the causeway to Granite Island. It is a tiny public space for Girder Family Amusements: a space between the holding pens for the horse drawn carriage to the Granite Island Recreation Park and the barbecue area in the Soldiers Memorial Gardens.
But a seaside town must have a funfair with its ferris wheel, dodgem cars, inflatable double slides etc etc. It is tradition--just like the horse drawn carriage to Granite Island and the Cockle train to Goolwa. There for the family day tourists.
Below are some more images in the ongoing series of suburban architecture at Victor Harbor in South Australia. These photos, which were made just prior to the Covid-19 lockdown whilst I was on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla. They are part of photography as placemaking.
This is at a time when the global digital photographic market is contracting and stagnating, resulting in Olympus selling off their camera business (a Micro 4/3 system) to a private equity firm. Covid-19 has increased the stagnation as it has bought photography to more or less a standstill since February 2020. One consequence is that there will inevitably be more consolidation in the camera industry and that the emphasis of my photography is on the local due to national travel restricted and international travel untenable. There will be more walking locally.
This white house is on the western end of The Esplanade. It overlooks the beach, is opposite a caravan park and it is near the mouth of the ephemeral Inman River. Kayla and I often walk past it on the return leg of the walk that we do along the Esplanade beach from Kent Reserve.
This house is at the other end of The Esplanade and it looks out to Granite Island.
Prior to the Covid-19 lockdown Kayla and I went on an early morning poodlewalk around the streets that border the estuary, lagoon and mouth of the Hindmarsh River. This is an older, residential part of Victor Harbor and it overlooks the railway line to the river port town of Goolwa, the beach and Encounter Bay. The houses are on a hill and their view of Encounter Bay includes Granite Island.
An early part of the walk on this occasion was the western part of the suburb of Hayborough. This is a well established part of Victor Harbor with many of the houses tucked away amongst the bush overlooking the Hindmarsh estuary and so difficult to photograph. Privacy is everything for the old Adelaide money. Fortunately, this particular house is not tucked away:
Another part of our walk was along Bridge Terrace in Victor Harbor that is just west of the mouth of Hindmarsh River This residential part of Victor Harbor overlooks a reserve and Encounter Bay, and runs from the the Granite Island causeway to Bridge PoInt, which overlooks the estuary and mouth of the Hindmarsh River:
The purpose of the poodlewalk was to have a break from both walking the back country roads and photographing the coastal rocks. landscape. I also wanted to photograph some of the residential architecture before some of these fine, old buildings are pulled down to make way for the newer double storey McMansion style homes.
The landscape b+w picture below of roadside vegetation in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula is from the archives. It was recently shared with the Melbourne-based Friends of Photography Group (FOPG).
The subtext of landscape art in Australia has been resolutely national; indeed, national identity—the Australianness of Australian art--tacitly assumed the primacy of the nation. I would have thought that the concept of empire would be central, since Australia was part of the British empire. An example would be the early colonial painters such as John Glover, who struggled to reconcile the Australian landscape with the confines of the picturesque, the dominant landscape aesthetic of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The picturesque was in effect the visual language of the colonisers--it highlighted the beauty rather than the hardships of imperial lands, depicting colonial Australia as a land ripe for settlement.
This landscape picture is of a rocky outcrop just west of Kings Head in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. It was made on an early morning poodlewalk that Kayla and I did. We hadn't been to this location to photograph since the autumn of 2019.
It was an overcast morning in late summer, on the cusp of summer and autumn. It was after a storm had just passed through Victor Harbor a few days earlier. The outcrop is on the Heysen Trail, but it can only be accessed when the tide is low.
Domestic coastal architecture is primarily a space for living within. Traditionally the buildings are sparse and functional. They are summer holiday houses simply built. Their exteriors are so ordinary as to pass unnoticed.
At Encounter Bay the 1940-50s houses are slowly being pulled down and grander seaside designs are being built. 51 Franklin Parade, Encounter Bay is a recent example:
