Two seascapes from the winter of 2022. Both of the pictures are of Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head (Kongkengguwarr) . This is a headland, 97m above sea level
I pretty much stand in the same location and I'm looking in the same direction east by south east --- the camera is basically looking across Encounter Bay to the coastline of the Coorong.
During the winter months I have been photographing the clouds and sea of Encounter Bay on the early morning poodlewalks. This photography has generally been before sunrise from the eastern side of Rosetta Head. The clouds usually disappear after sunrise
An example:
These are not just cloud studies nor just light studies as often it is the play of light on the water that attracts me as well as the clouds.
The clouds, light and colours change rapidly between 15 minutes before sunrise and 15 minutes afterwards.
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.
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:
Lately, I have been thinking about stepping beyond the boundaries of this Fleurieuscapes blog that doesn't really go anywhere. I have been thinking along the lines of having another solo exhibition, or of producing a photobook. I have enough material, and my thinking has been that the book is primary and the exhibition is secondary, in that the latter could be used to launch the photo book.
Judging from my experience with the previous Fleurieuscapes exhibition, exhibitions with framed prints are expensive, they have a short existence, and they are quickly forgotten. Few are the memories of them. So it doesn't really add up. However, an exhibition could be used as a platform to launch a photo book, thereby making the latter known to the public at the opening. Distribution is the really big problem with photobooks and launching the book at the opening night of the exhibition would help.
If so, then it is really becomes a question of how to organize the material in a photobook. It needs to have an idea to distinquish it from all the other photobooks being produced. The one that I have toyed with in the past a topological thinking is the idea of place--that is, my experiences of being in a place that is the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. In Heideggerian language to be is to be in place. So it is being -at-home-in-a place.
Photography, after all, is a way of collecting experiences, whilst the book is a way of moving photography away from the white walls of the art gallery. In this case a photography of a limited situatedness of existence in a place that is a series of events or processes in an open region .
As I mentioned in this post on the poodlewalks blog, I have neglected the Fleurieuscapes project because of my focus on other projects. Though I have been plugging away in a desultory and sporadic fashion, but I really unsure of what I am trying to do with this body of work from my coastal-based photographic practice. Photography, I've realised is good at showing and lousy at explaining. So what an I going to show?
The project is about place, and it is different to the Littoral Zone, Abstraction and Tree projects, even if it does incorporate the odd image from these other projects. Place in the sense of the space of the Fleurieu Peninsula, where people live and have made this space their home. So though Fleurieuscapes incorporates nature it also looks at the built environment at a specific historical moment.