Photography projects by Ross Duncan

Memories of place.

I read a book recently, well, two actually, where the main characters had a degree of visual impairment thrust upon them.

In the first book the character was rendered completely blind, suddenly and without warning, leaving him with just a memory of places and objects, these memories began to faded over time until he had just the suggestion of what things used to look like stored as a memory.

The second character was something entirely different; using drugs to induce a temporary state of blindness he believed this enhanced his perceptions of his surrounding environment.

Both books touched on these facets of memory, perception, form and shape. This short series of images have been made in response to that. My take on a visually impaired persons memories of place.

All The Beaches.

Sydney has beaches, sure, we all know that, Bondi of course, and Manly, we’ve all heard of them, they’re everyone’s favourites, even if you’re not from Sydney you’ve probably heard of a couple of others as well, maybe Coogee or Bronte ring a bell.
There’s plenty more to choose from though, dozens in fact, so, if you’re up for a bit of armchair travel, surfing the surf so to speak, then this post is for you.
I’ve just wrapped up a little project to shoot an image at each and every one of the surf beaches along the Sydney coastline.
From Cronulla in the south to Palm Beach way up on the northern beaches.
It’s a long trip, around 70 or 80 kilometres if you take the quickest route between just those two beaches, substantially more if you decide to drop in on every beach between.
Some have great long sandy shores, while others are little rocky coves hidden from the main roads.
I’ve got my new favourites now, Whale Beach on the north-side for a beach pool swimming spot, Dee Why, also on the north-side, for a holiday at home location, Little Bay and Tamarama on the south-side for a quiet getaway and a bit of people watching.
Least favourites?, sadly two of the big names, Bondi and Cronulla.
Bondi for it’s awful man-made environment, a charmless shopping strip, sitting unloved and surrounded by hectares of ghastly bitumen, and Cronulla for it’s access points, six lanes of choking traffic in and out, both places best avoided.

Brightness of seeing.

Quite often, when meeting a visitor from the Northern Hemisphere, while on their first visit to Australia, they remark on the light, surprised at just how bright it is, in the cities in particular, with all the glass and steel and chrome, the sun glare bouncing off those shiny surfaces. Without sunglasses a dull ache develops behind your eyes and you can quickly acquire the great Aussie squint attempting to cut the light back. It’s hard to look at things; they waver in the heat and the glare, lift your face and risk sunburn and eye strain, things appear briefly on the edge of your vision, sometimes you’re not sure if you actually saw it at all, it’s just a memory,.

A far cry from the soft and gentle conditions often found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Drawing on the idea of sun inspired visual memory; this series seeks to place the viewer in a position where they can stimulate and recall a memory of objects and sights, and create an eidetic image of past visual experience whether real or imagined.

The detritus of the night.

Is it trash or treasure, the detritus of the night viewed under the harshest of light reveals the visual value of disintegrating materials and everyday objects we don't normally pause to consider.

There's nothing to see there.

Inspired by a comment made to me while checking into a small country pub, camera slung over my shoulder.

She says “what are you going to be photographing”

I answer, “I’m going out to Lake George to have a look around”.

“Ohh” she says, “There’s nothing to see there”.

Which isn’t really true at all.

Lake George is a shimmering plain, over 25 kilometers along one length and 10 wide, it’s an endorheic lake, it has no outflow of water to either a river or to an ocean. When it fills the only place for the water to go is back into the earth, seeping down into the plain

A million years old, baking under an Australian sun, sometimes with a sheen of shallow water stretched across it’s surface, but mostly, now, nothing.

The indigenous peoples of the area used the name of Werriwa, or bad water, when it does have water it’s as salty as seawater. And haunted by Bunyips.

There’s still a mystery about the place, the locals will tell you that, mirage like, the lake will fill and empty quickly and without warning, in the 1960’s there was so much water a yacht club held regular races.

Tragically in the 1950’s two mass drowning’s added to the mystery of the place, five army cadets drowned and 18 months later a Queanbeyan man, his wife, and three children perished

It’s a hard place to look at, it’s flat ,there’s nothing to grab hold of, your eye darting across the plain trying to focus on something, you see things out of the corner of your eye and swing around to look, but there’s nothing there, it’s only when you get down closer to the ground when you begin to see the beauty all around.

It seems after all there’s plenty to see here, you just need to know where to look.

That's just wrong enough.

I once watched a documentary on Andy Warhol, it was shot in his New York studio, dubbed “The ‘Factory”.

He was, as always, surrounded by famous hangers on, all of them hoping to add to their 15 minutes of fame, it was an interesting enough glimpse into his life, but what struck me most, and has stayed with me for years was watching his frustration while he was shooting Polaroid portraits of his followers.

He kept on getting them too perfect, they were in focus just a bit too much, or didn't have enough movement in them, he shot over and over, packet after packet trying to get the just right, just wrong image, something that was so wrong it was just right.

This series is of public buildings around Sydney is inspired by Andy and his just wrong enough to be right photography.