'at Nature’s Pace'
Exhibition at The Bathers’ Pavilion, Balmoral Beach
28 June to end August 2018
Opening Night: Wed 27 June, 6.30-8.30pm
Guest speaker: Tom Keneally.
Nature’s Pace
can be slow, measured and long-lasting like the flow of sandstone
or fast and evanescent, like a wave or seagull flight.
It can follow the footfall of a surfer running towards the sea
or follow the seasons, splashing springtime acacia yellow among the Eucalypts.
I think of my photographs as Extracts of the Australian environment. Perhaps they appear abstract. However, my photographs are made in camera rather than being digitally created later and cannot be abstract according to Ansel Adams. He said, “I like to use the word extract… and the shapes of nature are then organized in the camera - in the mind first - and in the format, and develop towards a form, a form or statement of relationships.”
Many of my photographs incorporate movement rather than being snap-frozen in time by high shutter speeds. It is the ‘snap-frozen’ photographs that I regard as abstractions, though they are perceived as reality in our screen-and-image-saturated world. This camera technique, using movement, has a long history. It was pioneered over a century ago by the Bragaglia brothers, who coined the term ‘Photodynamism’. As Lyle Rexer puts it in The Edge Of Vision:
“… this approach overcame what they called the “rigor mortis” of the discrete image …the point was not to mimic reality but to unmask it, and only the paradox of an image that contained motion but did not stop time had the power to do that.”
Most of the images in this exhibition show Sydney's Northern Beaches and Bush. Making my photographs requires intensive thought and reflection because it is only by understanding the essence and depth of the scene that I can start developing and refining techniques to allow its expression. Photographic art is made in the first instance without a camera. I hope you feel that my work resonates with your experience, with what your eyes and minds perceive and how your soul is nourished by Nature’s Pace.
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All artwork consists of archival photographic prints. Each artwork is signed and edition limited, usually to 4 prints, plus Artist Proofs. Prints are mounted to ensure they remain flat, some with an acrylic front and some within a white float frame. Framed pictures range in size from 40 to 120cm wide.
To purchase, contact Les