A personal context about the singular place (topos) in which we find ourselves and where we live, walk and photograph.
The picture below is from a granite headland and is a view of the coastline in South Australia's southern Fleurieu Peninsula looking west from the top of a headland towards Kings Head, Newland Heads and Cape Jervis. The granite headland, which was ice-moulded during the Permian glaciation, is known as Rosetta Head (The Bluff) or Kongkengguwar for the first nations Ramindjeri people. This region is becoming increasingly developed and framed as a tourist experience. Rosetta Head itself is currently undergoing a major, long-term tourist upgrade by the Victor Harbor Council.
The walking trail along the western coastline from Petrel Cove in the foreground is now known as the Wild Coast Way and it links up with the southern part of the 1200 kilometre Heysen Trail, which starts at Cape Jervis and ends in the Flinders Ranges. Suzanne walked the Heysen Trail over 3 years. In spite of its length it is a very popular walk in South Australia.
We are only 5 minutes or so walking time from this coastline, and we walk it daily on our poodlewalks, including climbing Rosetta Head. Suzanne often does her morning exercises at this spot whilst the poodles (Maya and Maleko) would wait. (Maleko recently died from a cancer tumor).
The view below is looking east towards the coastal towns of Victor Harbor, Port Eliott, Middleton, Goolwa, the mouth of the Murray River and the
Coorong National Park.
The Kongkengguwar headland is the site for the ongoing
seascapes series. I am usually at the locality before or just on sunrise to photograph the unfolding 'being there' of natural being; or, to put it another way, the 'when' and 'where' (time and space) of natural being and the meaningful presence of what the photographer encounters.
The characteristics of the dynamic seascapes are unpredictable since their being is the play of time and space. This presence can be quite different each morning, whilst this 'staying there before us' can change during an early morning photo sessions about being-there. It is a photography that recognises how the natural being of this place has been increasingly concealed and covered over by the tourist industry.
The togetherness of
place, as opposed to geometrical space (neutral and empty), is a significant category for us, as it is where we dwell. If place is an essential part of human dwelling, then photographing the being of place is significant, given the rapidly changing
historical time of climate heating we are currently living in. Significant in the sense of the meaningful presence or significance to human beings.
Places's present is layered with the past and future, or better still, its present consists of an interweaving of past present and future: what is looming ahead, is already on its way -- what will be made present by the future. And with what was will be made present into what is to come.
