Void / Crowd

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Australia | Friday, October 28, 2011 | 5 photos

Right now, I may not have technical skills, but I know how to play to my strengths - which are being able to convey a narrative and a sense of place. I think that's a good foundation to build technique on, and I KNOW that teaching me won't be wasted effort. That I'll take what Jason can impart and run with it, hard. Because this is something I'm serious about: not just photography but being able to convey emotion forcefully.


As for this set, it's of a stretch of desert to the north of Perth, Western Australia. A couple of months ago I traveled there - to the state I grew up in - for the first time in fifteen years to see someone faking a terminal illness. I fully buy into the idea that people who dig vast, empty spaces - big skies, deserts, that sort of thing - do so because what's inside them can expand out to fill those voids; render empty places emotive. I like to imagine the rancour and loss raised by the trip soaking into dunes, beaches and and empty hotels across the state.


In the unlikely event that I’m chosen, of course I’d be ecstatic to see South Africa. I come from a poor-ass background and the opportunity wouldn’t otherwise arise. But I'd hope that I’d make more than just tourist snaps of the trip. I love expansive landscapes, and I hope that what I'd come back with would have some thematic heft. Would engage with what occupies those spaces, be it what animals do to one another, or what people do to and within that landscape. I want to be taught how to refine a sensitivity to that and give it more impact.