Mona Kuhn’s photographs of groups of beautiful naturists lounging around in apparent lazy luxury have sparked international interest. She was a finalist in the BMW-Paris Photo 1st prize for Photography, and her luscious large format colour prints are in demand from collectors worldwide. An attractively printed book including both colour and black-and-white work is available, as well.

Link to 13 minute interview with LensCulture Magazine

I recently received an email from Tom Goldner of The Fox Darkroom telling me about his recently established darkroom in Melbourne. It’s great to see a new facility for film photographers become available in this digital day and age and so I sent over a few questions to Tom to find out more about the venture.

Can you tell me a little about The Fox Darkroom – where you’re based and something of a background to the darkroom?

The Fox Darkroom is a stunning photographic studio and black and white darkroom located in the newly restored Young Husband Building at No. 10 Elizabeth St, Kensington. Nothing satisfies like making something by hand. Here, we indulge our love of traditional black and white photographic techniques.

Why Fox? The Fox Darkroom honours the contribute of pioneering British photographer and artist Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877).

Our philosophy is built on inspiring others to turn back the clock to a time when photography was deliberate, valued and made by hand. It’s a simple idea but driven with a lot of passion

— Tom Goldner, Founder.

What photographic facilities and services do you offer?

Our service includes introductory workshops, darkroom hire and darkroom membership.

Workshops
We pride ourselves on offering workshop that give our costumers the most personalised and creative learning experience around.

It’s our belief that anybody can learn how to take beautiful photographs and make stunning black and white prints in the darkroom regardless of level of experience. For this reason we have a maximum of 5 students per class. Currently we are offering two workshops which run most Saturdays – Photography & Developing Basics and Darkroom Printing Basics. For more information and bookings please visit www.thefoxdarkroom.com.au

Membership
Here at The Fox Darkroom we are building a thriving community of photographers and enthusiasts. Our very affordable $95.00 annual membership includes:

• Darkroom introductory session (1/2 hour)
• Equipment and chemicals all inclusive
• Expert advice and support on hand
• 25% discount on darkroom hire
• 10% discount on film, paper and frames
• Michael’s Camera Store discount
• Darkroom Hire

Everything you need to develop and print beautiful black and white prints will be at your disposal. All equipment and chemicals provided. Film and paper available for purchase. Make use of our fantastic facilities or make a coffee, spin a record and find inspiration in our photo library. We have 5 enlarger stations catering for 35mm to large format photography.

Hourly rate (members) – $15
Hourly rate (non-members) – $20

What is your personal background in photography? What are you interested in, as a photographer, and what kind of equipment do you use?

My career spans art, portraiture and commercial photography. In 2010 I founded Photo for Freedom, which helped raise awareness and $85,000 to fight child slavery in Ghana. In 2014 I established The Fox Darkroom as a creative hub where photographers can share their expertise and passion for black and white photography, breathing new life into traditional photographic techniques and processes. Photography for me is simply a way to pursue what I am passionate about. I believe there so much to be gained from the old way of doing things.

How is business looking at the moment? Is film actually alive and well, despite rumours to the contrary?

Although the business has only recently launched the response has been phenomenal. The community of analogue photography in Melbourne is so welcoming of what I am trying to achieve with The Fox Darkroom. One of the great pleasures of starting the business has been making connections with the remarkable individuals and organisations working to preserve traditional process. It is funny it has taken around almost a decade for people to realise something fundamental has been lost in our practice. I think film is most definitely alive but we need to work hard to preserve this important part of our history.

What are your plans for the future of The Fox Darkroom? What might visitors expect to see or do in 2015?

We endeavour to continue to improve our facilities, expand our membership base, exhibit, roll out new and advanced workshops and offer international photography tours to the public. I also want to build ongoing partnerships with likeminded individuals, businesses and organisations. Most importantly I want to keep opening peoples eyes to the magic of producing images by hand!

Do you have any upcoming events or exhibitions that readers of the blog may be interested in attending?

With the growth of our membership base we will explore the possibilities of holding an annual exhibition. You can keep track of our progress through our Facebook page

Anything else to add?

Thanks for taking the time to write up on us Alastair.

More information about The Fox Darkroom can be found at their website.

Gumnut Uranus 2014, toned silver gelatin photograph 495 x 390 mm

When, how and why did you become interested in photography?
I became interested in photography fairly early on. I was about twelve years old when I would go bushwalking with my dad on Mount Buffalo (North East Victoria, Australia). My Dad would bring his fathers Pentax SLR when we were bushwalking and I would photograph the landscape. I remember entering one of these photographs into a junior competition with the Bright Camera Club. I won the competition (I’m pretty sure I was the only contestant!) and was hooked on photography ever since.

Hazelnut Saturn 2014, toned silver gelatin photograph 495 x 390 mm

What influences you and your photography?
The people I meet within healing communities connected to the natural environment influence me. Many of these people are highly engaged in the work they are undertaking to nurture a more caring, humane and respectful society. It’s quite inspiring.

Influencing my approach to photography is the continual questioning and reassessing of what it means to make a photograph. Works that have inspired my photography include:

The series Tree Planting by Canadian artist Sarah Anne Johnson (exhibited at Julie Saul Gallery, New York in 2005). Johnson combined documentary style photographs, and crafted performing figures that she photographed, after she saw how naturally fact and fiction worked together to represent the collective sense of utopia the tree planting community achieved through a communal sense of purpose.
The book Rockaway, NY by American Photographer Roe Ethridge (published by MACK in 2008). Ethridge conveyed a positive and new approach to photography when the ubiquitous image was becoming so commonplace in society.

Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright’s theoretical writings on the significance and implications of shifts and overlaps in art and anthropological practices, including Contemporary Art and Anthropology, Between Art and Anthropology, and Anthropology and Art Practice.

Closer to home, I have enormous respect for New Zealand artist Lloyd Godman’s highly experimental photographic and sculptural works centred on environmental issues, and Australian photographic artist Janina Green’s conceptual photographic works (particularly her toned silver gelatin works).

It’s unusual for a young photographer to use a large format camera and chemical darkroom techniques rather than digital image-making. Why do you a large format camera and film?
While studying at RMIT in the late 1990’s, it was expected right from the start that we shoot colour transparency on 4 x 5 monorail cameras in the studio and black and white on 35mm and 120mm cameras on location (which then had to be hand printed). During this time, I built my darkroom in the back shed of my parent’s house so I could have all-nighter darkroom sessions before assessment time.

I’d say I’m intrigued by slow methods of photograph making in contrast to quick digital snapshots. I like the idea of slowing down the photographic making process within an image-saturated era. A large format camera and film enables me to do this.

Melon Sun 2014, toned silver gelatin photograph 495 390 mm

You are currently working on a number of projects, what are they?
A couple of months ago I finished the series Celestial Body Model for exhibition at Edmund Pearce, Melbourne. This series of works is currently included in the group show Transcendental at Galerie Pavlova, Berlin, until 1 November 2014. The photograph Pinhead Pluto from this series is also currently in the Bowness Prize at Monash Gallery of Art (and received an honourable mention!). Forthcoming is a curated group exhibition by Jake Treacy called Holy Lands at George Paton gallery, Melbourne, opening in October.

A side project I run with photo-artists Clare Rae and Ross Coulter called Slide Night is also hosting its next slide night at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) in October. We showcase 3 slides each by 7 invited artists within a slide night format.

Are you planning any new work?
At the moment I am taking a break from making new work until early next year. 2015 will bring a new project and a different direction to my work, exciting times ahead!

Can you explain how you go about making your photography?
A lot of research is completed before I head out into the field while working with a community. I want to try and begin to understand their approaches and values. When I am out in the field with a community I really just try to take in the experience, focus on experiential learning and things that are happening but not necessarily seen. Sometimes I don’t even pull out my camera (35mm or large format) for the first day or so because the camera can interfere with the experience. It is back in the studio and darkroom that I use different photographic techniques to highlight the sensory modes of understanding that I experienced.

Kate Robertson outside her darkroom

You have recently had a solo exhibition Celestial Body Model, and your work is currently on exhibition at MGA Bowness Prize 2014 and about to be shown in Berlin. How important is showing your work in galleries?
Very important. For me photography is about materiality and physicality. The choice of camera, film, film development, paper stock, paper size and the way it sits within a gallery space are decisions made along the photo-making process to best convey concepts and ideas. When viewing other photographer’s work I always consider and reflect upon the choices they made in their photo-making process.

Can you name some Australian photographers you admire?
There’s too many to note! I’m admiring a few exciting journals and collectives though!
Unless You Will, Try Hard Magazine, Asia Pacific Photo Archive and the 2015 Melbourne Photobook Festival.

Kate Robertson in her darkroom

Kate Robertson

Kate Robertson’s The Photograph Explained

Monash Gallery of Art Bowness Prize 2014

Galerie Pavlova, Berlin

Portrait of Robert James Elliott with Pony Premo six 6 ½ x 8 ½ camera.

“I suppose what really got me back into shooting Large Format was the collection of old cameras I had hanging around and the desire to start to get them working again. Some of these go up to 6 ½ x 8 ½ inches, the big size excites me, not only with the challenges to master, but the quality as well”.
Getting old stuff to work is not so easy, so I purchased a Shen Hao 4 x 5 and a couple of lens, out of the States with some double darks, this really got me motivated, especially having to hand process the results of a day’s shoot, in small trays in the darkroom.
There is nothing nicer than to hold up a processed sheet of black and white film to the light and see a clean, crisp image”.

“I try to keep things simple, even with the ISO film speeds. These days I only use Fomapan 100, my hand meters, of which I use two, do not change, week in week out. There are exceptions when I shoot glass plates, but that’s another story.
I process my 4 x 5 sheet film in D76 with a 1+1 dilution at approx. 68 to 70 degrees for about 7 minutes, use a stop bath and fix for about 4 minutes, followed by a good washing in running water.
Sometimes I let the film drip dry, other times I use a hand dryer.
The negatives are stored in a CD holding box, something I got off Crazy Sales on the internet, the negatives fit nicely into the numbered sleeves and they are protected with the aluminium case”. Robert James Elliott.

Silos. Pinhole camera, 4×5 sheet film, salt printed.

Robert James Elliott has come home again, in more ways than one. The country kid from northern Victoria who fetched up in the middle of armed conflicts and natural disasters in South and South-East Asia is now living in his old home town, making a peace and purpose for himself away from the wider world. The seasoned news photographer and photo-journalist is in his early sixties, and all that he wants is to make his own traditional-technique photographs. After all, that was how he got into photography in the first place.
Sitting in the gallery space of the Age building in Melbourne, on a flying visit to the city for the sake of this interview, Elliott has a matter-of-fact way of describing how he started out as a photographer: “Basically, I picked up my father’s range-finder camera,” he says. Those early efforts fired his interest and formed his ability. When the time came to put together a darkroom, “I started off in the laundry at home,” smiles Elliott, “much to Mum’s displeasure.”

“I made a move from the town that I was in, which was Yarrawonga, shifted to Albury [and] worked for the newspaper there.”
Newspaper work with The Border Mail and other publications carried on for many years, and Elliott went on to win several awards for his photography. In time, the big world called and he left Australia to work as an agency photographer.
Elliott based himself in Cambodia for Agence France Presse in 1997, his favourite foreign posting, before being transferred to the agency’s bureau in Hong Kong. After a stint as chief of the photo desk, he was eventually sent to India.

Old Shed. 4×5 sheet film, silver gelatin photograph.

Elliott speaks with a rising tone about his time in Cambodia. “That was a place where I felt very comfortable,” he says. “I loved the people. Also, it was a goldmine for pictures. Pictures were just everywhere. I used to get up early morning, early light, right out there in the street. I finished my work before lunch, because I had already worked my hours,” by which time he had produced a large variety of photographs.
This glorious visual bounty did not come without a few costs, however. Elliott might almost be talking about someone else as he runs through the list of misfortunes that he suffered throughout his career as a photo-journalist: “I’ve been robbed six times. I’ve been shot at, I’ve been bashed, I’ve been drugged,” he says, with only a slight tilting of his head to highlight the seriousness of such awful experiences.
None of those episodes seem to bother him very much now. “So, you know, I’m a survivor.”
As he makes clear, “In actual fact I found newspaper photo-journalism, working for the wire, extremely gratifying, because your end result was you had pictures in The New York Times, The Washington Post – your stuff was being published all over the world. Which is gratifying; it’s an end result, and that’s all that you can ask for.”

Old Barn. 4×5 sheet film, salt printed.

The occupational demands of the industry were eventually enough to make him work in a modern medium. As he acknowledges, “Digital I was shooting for twelve years,” he says, starting in 2000. The facility and convenience of digital cameras was attractive, and necessary, for those times when he needed to photograph and transmit something quickly.
Over time, unfortunately, it became obvious that any amount of ability and luck was not enough to keep him going forever. “What happened when I went freelance in late 2004,” says Elliott, “[was] the market went down.” He found it harder and harder to sustain himself once he had gone out on his own. Of the photography, he said, “It’s got nowhere to go, so there’s no end result, no satisfaction in the end apart from taking a nice picture. If you’re the only one that sees this nice picture, what’s the point?”
Elliott eventually regarded the winding-down of his work as a photo-journalist with some relief, as he explains: “In some ways it was good, because I got rid of all of that crap that I was carrying around on my shoulders, giving me aches and pains, and looking like a pack horse. From that point of view it was terrific.”
He cannot help but to sound a little wistful, however, as he adds, “But to be quite honest I really missed it, for a very, very long time.”
That was then; this is now. As he says firmly, “I’ve got to the stage now where I don’t miss it at all – in fact, I don’t particularly like [the] media much at all. They don’t have any scruples any more. To me, a lot of stuff that’s currently coming out of the mainstream media is some sort of violence. I don’t need that in my life. I don’t want to see it.
“I couldn’t work in the media any more,” he insists. Some of this conviction comes from what he regards as the scaling-down of the quality and emphasis on good photography in the printed media. “You’ve got journalists who are taking pictures too, with their phones.
“That is why I concentrate upon what I’m doing now, because I’m enjoying it and it’s a challenge. I get to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, for as long as I want.”

Old Truck. 4×5 sheet film, salt printed.

What he is doing now is going back to the old ways of making photographs, the Old Testament of esoteric alchemy from the earliest days of the craft. Earlier this year Elliott attended a salt-printing workshop conducted by Ellie Young at Gold Street Studios in Trentham East , learning from the ground up about one of the original techniques in photography.
The instruction that he received at East Trentham was a matter of necessity, as Elliott readily admits. “I did salt-printing on my own, without doing a workshop, and had bloody awful results,” he says. “But I got those glimmers of hope, and those glimmers of hope gave me enough courage to say, ‘I’ve got to do a workshop’, and when I did a workshop it was like doors were opened.”
Indeed they did. “The darkroom to me was always magic,” proclaims Elliott, “but alternate photography has got another element to that again.”
‘Alternative photographic processes’, is a term for the rarefied form of the craft to which he is now devoting himself. It’s clear that for Elliott this practice is how he intends to highlight his work and identity as a photographer, somewhat apart from his long history in news and documentary imagery.
Elliott’s determination to do something unique as an image-maker is plain in all that he describes about the kind of photography that he is practicing now. “Doing pinhole – and then doing salt-printing on top of that – it puts you in a very small category of people, all around the world,” he says. “And that just excites me.”
Elliott’s salt-print pictures look as though they might have just been salvaged from a derelict shearers’ dormitory, cast into careless storage by the indifferent relative of a long-ago passed-away pastoralist hobby photographer. Grain silos, graveyards, windmill water derricks, broken dwellings, machinery sheds and rusting trucks marooned in a sea of back-paddock scrub. The images speak so clearly of the country-boy’s view of the world that carried him away and so far from home. With these pictures, it seems, Elliott is striving to re-ground himself in his native territory, using an original camera technique to claim his country.
“A lot of my stuff has been experimentation,” says Elliott, of his subjects and his results. “I’m trying to find how wide my pinhole camera goes, how deep it goes.
Ian Latter from McKellar in the ACT built me a couple of superb pinhole cameras, which perform beautifully.”
The call of his old professional stomping-ground can be clearly heard in his next comment, however: “I would like to probably do something [with pinhole photography] at Angkor Wat, in Cambodia.”
With all of his experience and insight Elliott feels more than able to comment upon the purposes and motives of photography in a media-saturated world.
“When it’s all said and done: why are you doing it?” he asks. “Most people are looking for some sort of return: as in, they’re not going to get money from a magazine. So, what they’re looking for is accolades, so that it promotes them, so that they can then probably make some money by doing some work for somebody. I’m not interested in doing work for anyone.
“That’s why I’m making such strong, strong changes to what I do to separate myself from the masses.”
The closing circle of Elliott’s work as a photographer is outlined when he makes a comment about his current passion for older, slower camera work: “I did large-format when I was working in advertising,” he says, “so I shot with a large-format camera then.” Any notion of expertise with the format, however, is soon done away with. “But I didn’t know what I was doing. The only reason I know what I’m doing now is I have more control over the end result, of what I’m looking for.”
It’s been a long time, and a long way, from the early days of the photography in his childhood rural neighbourhood. Elliott has made countless pictures in the meantime, in so many more exotic locations than he can possibly name. Even so, he can say with all certainty: “The stuff that I’m working on now is far more exciting than anything that I have ever done in my life.”
His last word, one can sense, is all that he truly wants to say, to himself as well as to anyone else: “I want to go and do my own thing.”

Christopher Deere

Robert James Elliott is author of several books including: Remembering Cambodia

Robert’s web site

Photographs by Robert James Elliott.

Los Angeles blogger Rebecca Woolf uses her blog, Girl’s Gone Child, as a window into her family’s life. Naturally, it includes oodles of pictures of her four children.

She says she’s probably taken tens of thousands of photos since her oldest child was born. And she remembers the moment when it suddenly clicked — if you will — that she was too absorbed in digital documentation.

“I remember going to the park at one point, and looking around … and seeing that everyone was on their phones … not taking photographs, but just — they had a device in their hands,” she recalls.

Today, Woolf still takes plenty of pictures, but she tries to not let the camera get in the middle of a moment, she says.”I was like, ‘Oh, God, wait. Is this what it looks like?’ ” she says. “Even if it’s just a camera, is this how people see me? … Are [my kids] going to think of me as somebody who was behind a camera?”

Effect On Childhood Memory

With parents flooding their camera phones with hundreds of photos — from loose teeth to hissy fits to each step in the potty training process — how might the ubiquity of photos change childhood memories?

Maryanne Garry, a psychology professor at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, is trying to figure that out. For years, she’s studied the effects of photography on our childhood memories.

“I think that the problem is that people are giving away being in the moment,” she says.

Those parents at the park taking all those photos are actually paying less attention to the moment, she says, because they’re focused on the act of taking the photo.

“Then they’ve got a thousand photos, and then they just dump the photos somewhere and don’t really look at them very much, ’cause it’s too difficult to tag them and organize them,” she says. “That seems to me to be a kind of loss.”

“If parents are giving away some of their role as the archivist of the child’s memory, then they’re giving away some of their role as one of the key people who helps children learn how to talk about their experiences,” she says.Not just a loss for parents, but for their kids as well.

Photographing More, Experiencing Less

The idea that we are experiencing less as we record more got psychologist Linda Henkelthinking. Her father was a photographer, and she wanted to explore how photographs shape our memories.

Henkel, who researches human memory at Fairfield University in Connecticut, began an experiment by sending groups of students to the university’s art museum. The students observed some objects and photographed others. Then, back at the laboratory, they were given a memory test.

Henkel found what she called a “photo-taking impairment effect.”

“The objects that they had taken photos of — they actually remembered fewer of them, and remembered fewer details about those objects. Like, how was this statue’s hands positioned, or what was this statue wearing on its head. They remembered fewer of the details if they took photos of them, rather than if they had just looked at them,” she says.

Henkel says her students’ memories were impaired because relying on an external memory aid means you subconsciously count on the camera to remember the details for you.

“As soon as you hit ‘click’ on that camera, it’s as if you’ve outsourced your memory,” she says. “Any time we … count on these external memory devices, we’re taking away from the kind of mental cognitive processing that might help us actually remember that stuff on our own.”

Mindful Photography

Henkel says it’s also a mistake to think of photographs as memories. The photo will remain the same each time to you look at it, but memories change over time. Henkel likens it relying on photos to remember your high school graduation.

“Each time I remember what my high school graduation was like, I might be coloring and changing that memory because of my current perspective — because of new ideas that I have or things that I learned afterwards,” she says. “Human memory is much more dynamic than photographs are capable of.”

But Henkel doesn’t want people to stop taking photos. They’re still valuable tools that can provide “rich retrieval clues” later on, she says. Instead, she’d like us to be more mindful when taking pictures in the first place.

“I don’t know that the new technology is serving the functions of preserving memories quite as well, unless you take the extra step and actually look at the photos, and revive those memories from them.”

From NPR

FotoFilmic: Can you briefly describe the type of analog photography facilities & services you offer?

Strange Neighbour: Strange Neighbour Darkrooms are dedicated to promoting and preserving darkroom practice. The spacious and well-equipped black and white darkroom and film processing room are for hire and offer easy access for the photographic community. All equipment is provided for printing and developing 35mm, 120mm and 4×5″ film formats. Our darkroom printing is wet tray and caters for up to 20 x 32inch prints. Enlargers, tanks, easels, focus finders, proofing easels and chemistry are provided and clients supply their own paper. Membership is mandatory, and ensures all photographers accessing the darkroom are comfortable using the equipment and processes safely and independently. For those photographers new to the darkroom, Strange Neighbour darkroom courses will be running from April.

FF: What is the human & artistic story behind Strange Neighbour? What motivated you to create or sustain a kind of business many now see as obsolete (if not doomed)?

SN: Strange Neighbour is a contemporary art gallery based in Fitzroy with separate studios and B+W darkroom onsite. Strange Neighbour opened last June with the launch of our curator-led gallery space, which has a unique program of multi-disciplinary exhibitions encompassing cross-generational artists. The gallery model is innovative, sitting between a commercial gallery and an artist-run space and has an advisory board. In January this year we opened our studio spaces and this April we have just launched our darkroom with a curated darkroom exhibition by director, Linsey Gosper. She has had a dream to open a community access black and white darkroom for over 10 years and has been collecting and storing enlargers and darkroom equipment during this time. It was always a plan of the founders Linsey Gosper and Ash Kerr, to build a darkroom at Strange Neighbour – this however takes time and cash so it was a process. During this time people have come forward and contributed bits and pieces from their personal darkroom collections, so it seems we are not the only ones who have been holding on to this antiquated technology in the hope that it would one day be used again. To our knowledge there are no other such darkrooms for hire in Melbourne.

Stick Shed by Lloyd Shield

The first thing that should be said about Lloyd Shield’s photographs is that they are undeniably photographs – often made so, in the showing, by the inclusion of the outlines of their large-format frame holder in the final picture. His deliberate use of the device is a way of reinforcing the idea of the image as an artefact, as solid and valid as the subject that it represents, the thing that it shows. The effect is almost one of a transposed timelessness: a suggestion of the tradition that his work reaches back towards to keep alive for the modern viewer.

This is his hallmark, his regard for the craft of photography. Steady, attentive and respectful: values that suit his choice of subjects, his natural landscapes and historic buildings and industrial structures. So it’s hardly surprising that his cameras are the kind which lend themselves best to his mindful approach. Large in format, many of them antique, his picture-making instruments speak of the heritage and legacy that his photographs convey so clearly.

Chute by Lloyd Shield

Lloyd is something of a late starter to the practice of photography, and this is perhaps a hint of the quality that he brings to his work.

As he tells it, “In my forties, I started doing serious bushwalking. I took a 35mm camera along and collected a series of images. In the late 1990s I started looking at my images; I started looking at the images coming out of Tasmania: Peter Dombrovskis, the Wilderness Society, etc. – and saw that there was a fairly big gap between them.

“So then I asked myself, “Well, how do I get from here to there?” And that took me to medium-format photography.”

It also took him to Photography Studies College, where he undertook an Advanced Diploma of Photography as part of the seriousness with which he wanted to apply himself to the craft.

It was while studying at PSC that he first used a 4 x 5 camera, the start of his foray into large-format work, gradually finding himself doing more than was required for the course.

Carrying on with his earlier smaller-format interest in landscape, he then extended his subject range into architectural and heritage photography. This was partly a response to his realisation that long-range outings into the wilderness were no longer so easy for him. At seventy, he now wants to concentrate upon those subjects and those projects that time and physical ability will allow.

“I don’t miss it in the sense that I haven’t given it up,” he says, of the kind of wilderness photography to which he so much liked to devote himself when he was younger. These days, however, “It’s more from the boot of a car than three days in the Tasmanian wilderness.”

It was his choice of a heritage building in his own home suburb, a municipal council incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin, that allowed him to explore his interest in industrial structures, and then led to the first public exhibition of his photographs.

“At PSC, I had to do a folio of my own choosing one semester,” he says. “At that time [in 2004] the building that is now known as the Incinerator Gallery had its transformation. I had to do this folio at a time before it was re-opened, and the Council very generously gave me permission to photograph inside.”

Hanging In The Balance by Lloyd Shield

The Cathedrals of Industry exhibition, which coincided with the final refurbishment of the building, was held in the Incinerator Gallery in 2011. It featured a series of Lloyd’s photographs of the many old interior details. One of his photographs, ‘Hanging in the Balance’, shows a tightly framed view of a set of balance scales, its dead weights angled like the stocky arms of a soldier at lazy attention. The image was used on the poster for the exhibition.

The determination that Lloyd brings to his work as a large-format photographer is obvious in the way that he speaks of its technical and temperamental value for his choice of subjects. The exact and careful effort of making each picture and print is no deterrence for him. In fact, it is the very reason why he works in this way. The old methodical habits of his long working life are now carried over to the camera-work, and it shows.

Says Lloyd, “Shooting full frame, of course, requires a fair amount of discipline, because there’s no cropping involved – minimal distraction, minimal intrusion.”

Lloyd’s workmanlike attitude to the craft is plain in every aspect of his practice: the framing, the capture, the developing, the printing and the display. The print is the final product of his serious work, the outcome of his choice of application as a dedicated photographer. It serves as the proof of his clear-eyed vision.

“I work best when I’ve got a purpose,” he reveals. “I work best when I’ve got a project.”

Former Clunes Post Office by Lloyd Shield

One of his current projects, soon to draw to a close, is a large series of photographs of old post office buildings in Victoria – few of which, now, are still being used for their original purpose. As he puts it, “I thought … wouldn’t it be good to have a record of all the post offices in Victoria built before 1900, essentially the Victorian era.”

An early tally of thirty, reached through a search of the official records of Heritage Victoria and The National Trust, gradually grew to include a larger number of other discoveries found by local referrals and sheer footwork. Lloyd’s collection of post office images now runs to more than ninety.

However, he can now see that the end is drawing near. The choice of a round number to match the grace of the subjects has made up his mind.

“I decided I’d get to one hundred and maybe call it quits,” he says.

Inside & out by Lloyd Shield

Apart from the modern appearance of the car in the frame, his photograph of the post office building at Flemington could seemingly have been made at the time of its opening in 1854. The light-toned black-and-white image is as contemporary as it is nostalgic, and formal in its full-view composition. To a local, the picture might surprise with a stranger’s view something that he sees almost every day.

Lloyd’s aim seems simply to ensure that the series is completed, that the record is kept and made available for a wider audience. He looks forward to an exhibition or a book or an e-book, any outlet that will give other people a chance to see these magnificent places before they disappear forever. He smiles a little at the suggestion of a series of postage stamps.

“I have no pre-conceived ideas as to how important or not my images might be in terms of conservation,” he says. “But I have a sense that unless you bring things to people’s attention, they don’t know about it.”

Indeed, Lloyd is quite straightforward about the worth and purpose of these photographs: “What I’m trying to do is literally make a portrait of a building.”

Which is why he uses the big boxes and takes all of the time that he needs to do the job properly. It’s always an ongoing process: each new image is a new exercise in working out how to make it happen. “I guess it’s just on ten years since I first held a large-format camera,” he says, “and I don’t consider myself to have become an expert in the field. I still see myself as a learner.” The only other kind of photography that he ever practises is the kind that lends itself best to convenience: “I use digital for travel.”

To the mild bemusement of his wife, Jan, Lloyd owns more than twenty antique large-format or view cameras. Most are in working order, but he does not make a point of using each one for the sake of making a photograph. “They’re more for the enjoyment of restoring, preserving,” he says, “and giving them a longer life.”

As it happens, there are other purposes to which an antique camera can be put beyond the photographic. One of his restored cameras was recently used as a prop in a VCA student movie, lending a detail of period authenticity for which the actors were grateful.

Working from the well-equipped darkroom and studio in his home at Moonee Ponds, Lloyd is now free to devote himself to his passion as a photographer. A long career in medical science is now behind him; so, it is time for the creative side of his character to make itself known.

“I have essentially spent my life in a scientific field, with no intimate contact with the arts,” he says. “I did not ever think that I had an artistic bone in my body.”

The quiet contentment that Lloyd feels for the vocation that he now follows is plain in the saying out of his last remark:

“I think I’ve been lucky enough to find some way of bringing it [creativity] to the surface, and that’s through photography.”

Portrait of Lloyd Shield by David Tatnall

By Christopher Deere

Portrait of Kate Baker & David Roberts by Christopher Deere.

It’s almost too overwhelming for any serious shutter-bug to visit Kate Baker and David Roberts: to see how they have found and made a place that is so well-suited to the pursuit of high-craft photography, with all of the material arranged and available in a setting that allows all of the time and space needed for the production of a good print. It doesn’t seem fair. Fair and right it is, however, because the two are so devoted to and determined about the practice of archival-quality photography that they have made sure of their ability to do it.

Partners in life and in light, Baker and Roberts make their home and their photographs in the hills just above Warburton. Their new home – they were still in the middle of moving in and setting up at the end of January – is all about their common vocation as fine-art photographers. With a workroom, a darkroom, a studio gallery, a storage room and a library there is no reason not to be able to produce a big picture that will last forever. The rumpled green blanket of the Yarra Ranges stretches all around, placing David’s seasonal role as a fire-watcher in close perspective with his large-format photographer’s view of the world.

Speaking in their kitchen on a mild summer afternoon, Kate makes clear what the new place means to the couple: “For David and I, this now is a home that can be our sanctuary and our base. We have a beautiful workspace set up, so that we can focus fully on our work. We have a darkroom, we have a space where we can hang and show our work, and we have a dedicated workspace to look after our prints. So for us this is really a long-term way to get all of those issues out of the way and be totally focused on our art.”

Neither surely needed to persuade the other of any interest in traditional large-format photography, as they met at the first gathering of ‘The View Camera Gathering’ at Trentham in 2007. Friends for some years before becoming partners, each had already followed an independent career in publication and exhibition for many years. When they decided to combine their lives and vocations they made their home on a small remote property in the Don Valley, an idyllic hamlet that was also and alas not very suitable for the production and storage of archival-quality photographs. The move to Warburton is a concrete statement about the couple’s long-range dedication to their work as traditional-technique image-makers.

“We both love the same thing, but we take very different paths toward and around it,” says David. “Our hearts are passionate about it, and that’s a wonderful thing to share. We don’t have to see the same way, and we don’t have a competition about it.”

When it comes to the issue of influences each is keen to point out that they have now reached a point of confident expression and style. As Kate says,

“Ultimately, I tend to follow my own voice. There are photographers that I admire: so, for example, I really like Sally Mann’s work, I like Ruth Bernhard’s work … she did a lot of portraits and nudes. Sometimes,” she adds, “I‘m more inspired by paintings than other people’s photographs.”

Cadenza by Kate Baker.

And by music, another aspect of her background that now finds its expression in her portraits of dancers and musicians. Kate’s dancers are both haunting and haunted, almost the ghosts of their desperate urge to bring their movement to life in the visible world. Her musicians are shown in the very act of making music, in the peak moment of using their various instruments for greatest effect.

“I was raised playing classical music,” Kate explains. “So, for me, music has always been evocative of mood … listening to words, lyrics, is a new experience.”

David is almost in confessional mode as he reveals a telling detail about his development as a serious photographic practitioner: “For a number of years I did not look at anyone else’s work at all,” he says. “I wanted to explore for myself. I deliberately cut myself off for probably four or five years.” He pauses, and adds, “It was kind of like swimming in the deep end of the pool.” This separation from the examples and influences of other photographers served to sharpen his ability and reassure him of his decision to concentrate upon large-format photography, leading to the subjects and projects for which he has become so highly regarded.

“I began to have a passion for photography when I was in my forties and was using a thirty-five millimetre [camera], never pleased with the kinds of prints that I was getting; so moved up to medium-format, was more happy but still not pleased, not satisfied with the prints: with the tonality, with the detail, I felt that there was a presence lacking.”

David’s background of academic interests – he has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in theology – have helped to form the outlook for his work with a camera. “I think [that] more important than what is photographed is why and how it is photographed,” he says. “The whole idea of me photographing something is to be able to make, recognise and hopefully photograph a connection, regardless of the subject, whether a landscape or a portrait.

“Minor White, for example, said that he photographed things for what else they were. So he had a sense that you could look at something and make a photograph of it; but you could also go past it, and see something deeper, different layers from the outside layer.

In an obvious nod to the influence of one of his favourite photographers, Edward Steichen, David’s website carries the name and the design of Camera Work, the seminal journal of the craft that was founded and published by Alfred Steiglitz during the early twentieth century. Steichen designed the cover with its trademark plain-bordered title, and became the most frequently presented photographer throughout the publication’s fifteen-year run. In his use of the name David underlines the seriousness and authenticity that he brings to his photographic practice, using very much the same techniques and materials as the traditionalists who worked to turn photography into a form of fine art.

Dalai Lama by David Roberts.

It was in 2007, also, that David photographed the Dalai Lama after contacting the host organisation for the supreme Buddhist leader’s visit to Australia. Making such a bold request is not unthinkable to him, as it fits in with his idea of the timeless nature of classic portrait photography. His pictures show the famous figure as a little less His Holiness and a little more a humble Tibetan monk, underlining the quiet spiritual aspect of his being.

Mark Strizic by David Roberts.

Another of David’s signature portrait subjects is Mark Strizic, the leading Australian modernist documentary photographer who died in the December of 2012. Roberts photographed Strizic at his Wallan home earlier that year, sitting in a lozenge of soft light while the surrounding details of chair and painting and bookcase and coffee table fade away behind him. Strizic is looking out of the frame, almost as though he is being startled by whatever the view that he has noticed outside the window. The photograph is an emblem and an honouring, a quiet gesture of respect for the life and being and work of a master image-maker.

Kate’s own fondness for portrait photography shows in the strong sense of character that is highlighted in her images, where the identifiability of the subject fills or even pushes out past the edges of the frame.

“What motivates me is my ability to connect with my subjects, and my ability to express [that] connectedness. My intention with the dance series was that I wanted people to understand what it feels like to dance. I know that it feels amazing to be able to express your soul through movement and dance. But I wanted someone who doesn’t dance to be able to see that, and to relate to it.

“I love portraiture,” she says, “because you have the opportunity to be with somebody: where it’s only you, that person, nobody else in the world, the two of you and a camera. It’s as though a doorway opens and I’m given the opportunity to be present.”

Emma by Kate Baker.

Her urge to bring out the character in even the most unlikely of subjects led to the Oasis Project, a two-and-a-half year involvement with the Oasis Youth Support Network at Surry Hills in Sydney. A residential and outreach programme operated by the Salvation Army, Oasis supports and cares for homeless and disadvantaged young people from their middle teens to their middle twenties.

The project led to the book Fridays At Oasis, which presented the subjects’ testimonies with Kate’s portraits in a plain statement of lived reality. As Kate points out: “In the Oasis series I photographed about fifty young people; and only two ever tried to comb their hair, or say ‘What do I look like?’ They understood: because I went in in a very straight, authentic way, tried to be completely without any artifice. Two people said, ‘Why are you doing it?’ So I said to them, ‘Well, I’m really interested in character; and I hope that through this photograph it’s something that reflects who you are’.”

The fundamental regard shared by the couple for their subjects as recognisable people is illustrated in the legacy of the project for Kate, who says, “I started that series in 2006, and I still have several of the young people from that series in contact with me, and they will tell me what they’re up to. Two of them have actually taken up photography. So I know that the work touched them. I know that some of these young people who were subsequently homeless again have had almost no possessions, but they take their photographs with them.”

Indigo’s Journal by Kate Baker.

Another of her subjects is an out-of-focus middle-aged woman writing in a book, with a cup and saucer showing sharply as they sit tilting into one corner of the frame. “I met Indigo in a café,” says Kate. “She’s a writer; she seemed very interesting. In fact she was a finalist in the National Biography Award one year, for her memoir about a traumatic life experience. I was introduced to her because she had heard about my book; she didn’t realise at the time [that] it wasn’t a fiction book.

“I asked if I could make her portrait; and she said, ‘What should I do?’ I said, ‘You don’t need to do anything. Just do whatever you’re going to do while you’re here’.”

The picture tells its own story of quiet concentration, of time and patience for a solitary creative activity. The figure is shown as lost in her own purpose, her indistinct features lending the suggestion of her retreat from the wider world.

“I really wanted to express her world, and so the photograph was all about her and her journal. She goes to cafes, and she sits in them for hours and hours on end, and writes in these beautiful leather-bound journals and sips cups of tea from beautiful fine china; and she gets completely immersed in her own world.”

Kate’s next project will soon take her a little further away from home, as she prepares to leave the Yarra Valley to visit Germany for six weeks.

“I’ll be photographing a dancer with a piece of work that I have in mind inspired by Nijinsky, the Russian ballet dancer who fundamentally inspired modern dance.”
For the couple and their cameras, the move to Warburton is a marker for the next stage of their careers.

David’s last word is a modest statement of the calling that photography has become for him. “I hope to give it everything I have for the rest of my life,” he says. “It’s something that I feel that I can give to, but it also feels like something that nourishes me.”

By Christopher Deere

More about Kate Baker

More about David Roberts

A new series of profiles featuring Australian large format photographers will be on line here soon.

Journalist Christopher Deere has begun interviewing large format photographers whose profiles and photographs will be featured on this blog soon.

The first in this new series will be Kate Baker and David Roberts, large format photographers from Warburton in Victoria’s Yarra Ranges.

Photographs:
Kate Baker and David Roberts.
Christopher Deere interviewing Kate Baker.

Photographs by David Tatnall.

I have been photographing since the age of 11 years (in 1951 for the sake of completeness) when I built my first enlarger from an old Ensign camera my father used during World War II. The chassis was wood and the light source was a small petrol can with a 100 watt bulb and a diffuser. It taught me a lot. Unfortunately (or perhaps otherwise) all photographs from then are lost.

Via ESCP