equineocean: photography and writing

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | flickr photos

Since returning to Australia last year after travelling overseas, I have rekindled my interest in photography, particularly in 35mm film photography. As well as seeking to learn about the artistic medium of film, I’m starting to discover how photography can teach me new things about the places and landscapes around me. I’m currently completing a Creative Writing Honours degree in Melbourne, and have found that photography has made me look at the world in different ways, which in turn has changed the way in which I capture imagery in my writing. This interplay between artistic forms works both ways, as the seeking of stories in my writing begins to play out in my photography.

The images that I am submitting here are not focussed on human subjects, but there is a strong element of human story within them. The rural location that I’ve explored carries the traces not only of climate and of the seasons, but also of human land use impacts. There’s a blurring of the boundaries between human and non-human, as there is any rural landscape, where the life of a community is embedded in and centred upon the landscape. For me there is poignancy in this region: in the scarcity of trees on the hills, in the bright green growth after rain, and in a lingering sense of decay.

I’m a good candidate for the World Nomads scholarship because I am interested in the layers that are embedded within a place – layers of culture, history, geology, climate, and of the day to day life of its people. I’m also keen to explore the interplay between a place that’s unknown to me and the capture of that place in photography. I am keen to travel and to learn and would fully appreciate the opportunity that World Nomads is offering.