I don't recall when I made this b+w abstraction.
I know the location though. I was walking in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla. It was an intuitive rather than a planned photo.
I don't recall when I made this b+w abstraction.
I know the location though. I was walking in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla. It was an intuitive rather than a planned photo.
Throughout the winter of 2023 I would often spend an hour or so wandering through the local Waitpinga bushland with Kayla on an early morning poodlewalk. I'd be walking in the bushland just after sunrise, and whilst walking I started a bark series with the Leica M4-P. It would be one camera, one lens, one film and it would centre on the ontology of the object in the present moment. The bark is so mundane, that if we encounter it in everyday life, we would barely register it.
There are some earlier photos that preceded this series as a conscious walking art project, and they can be interpreted as pointing to what was to become. These early photos can be viewed here and here and here. Oh, and here. They emerged from drifting --from becoming lost in the bushland, being responsive to chance and to circumstance, and privileging the reactivity of the walk itself.
It is a low key walking art series, which explores the ephemera of the mundane bark peeling off the trunks and branches of the pink gums; or the piles of bark lying on the ground. The transience of the bark, its decay and disintegration (ie., perishability) is one of the more recognisable aspects of the flux, or the constant change in the bushland apart from the occasional fallen tree. It was slow walking whilst keeping an eye out for foxes, kangaroos, and rabbits so I could prevent Kayla from chasing them.
The series as a walking art project is premised on a meditative walking and seeing (of being in the ephemeral present) and on the photography being simple. It is underpinned by Japanese aesthetics, with its minimalist approach and complex and sophisticated categories with multiple interpretations (eg., wabi-wabi). It is a modest, walking art project that is contrary, or offside to, the currently fashionable photographic approach to make hero mages that celebrates the photographer's vision.
I have found that an appealing aspect of using the renovated Leica M4-P film camera after a year of being without it is its operational simplicity, especially when compared to the complex menus of the current mirrorless, full frame digital cameras. The film rangefinder's mechanics are so basic that the camera forces you to photograph differently.
The M4-P rangefinder was made before Leica included a light meter in its film rangefinders and the limits of film are quickly reached in low light situations. So it is not an all round camera like the latest full frame mirrorless digital cameras -- such as the sophisticated Sony A7 RV, the Nikon Z8 or the Canon EOS R5.
Within these limits the usability of the rangefinder centres on image making that is slow placed and premised on the characteristics of the film and the limitations of the rangefinder camera.
Due to the cost of 35m colour negative film (Kodak Portra 400 ASA) these days the 'in camera' image making has to be slow and considered by necessity. You are forced to slow down, evaluate what you are seeing, and then think about constructing the image as a poetics.
Leica Australia have just informed me that the camera body of the salt water damaged M4-P rangefinder (circa 1980s) has been repaired and that it is on the way from Wetzlar in Germany to Sydney, Australia. Sadly, the Leica 50mm Summicron f.2 lens is unrepairable as was the basic Sekonic light meter (a Sekonic L-308 S) that I'd been using. I need to buy another 50mm Summicron and, unfortunately for me, these lenses aren't cheap, even the second hand ones. So it won't be going with me to Japan in October.
I have missed not using the M4-P (one camera one lens) the last 10 months that it has been in Germany. I found the simplicity of the camera (one body, one prime lens) so appealing. The simplicity of the rangefinder is that it reduces the gap between meditative seeing and the camera's sight. It is a shift towards becoming one with the camera.
I made the above photo in the winter of 2022. It is from one of the 5 rolls of 400 ASA Portra that I'd exposed prior to the M4-P becoming badly damaged. It was the late afternoon winter light that caught my eye as I was walking along one of the various paths in the bushland that were made by the kangaroos with Kayla.
In this earlier post I mentioned that in December 2022 my Leica M4-P and the Summicron 50mm lens was damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing on the rocks along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.
Leica advised that the lens was unrepairable but that they could repair the camera body. The rangefinder body is now with the Leica workshop in Wetzlar, Germany and I've been advised that there is a 6 months wait for analogue camera repairs. So I will need to acquire another 50mm lens.
The film (Kodak Portra 400 ASA ) that was in the camera at the time of the salt-water accident was developed and I have recently scanned it. This is one frame:
The photo below was made on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla in 2022 in the local bushland in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. The photo was made around the same time as this black and white one.
Kayla and I did a lot of our early morning walks in this particular bushland, as it was one of her favourite places to walk in. We would come across foxes, rabbits and kangaroos in the winter/spring months and so there were lots of scents for there. She would wait whilst I photographed. On this occasion I was attracted by the subtle colours of the bark and the leaves.
This image is produced by a form of lens-based photography as distinct from the photographic. Then former involves creating images using light, a camera and film. (Digital technology replaces film with a sensor.) We need to make a distinction between photography and the photographic and to see them as two distinct entities, given the emergence of AI-generated images. Our photographic language has become a free floating entity separated from (lens-based ) photography and it now has a life of its own.
That is our starting point in the current situation.
The two bark abstracts below were my initial attempt at abstract poetics with black and white film (IlFord HP5 Plus 400 ASA). I was reading Lyle Rexer's The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography at the time. Most of the recent photographic abstractions are digital and in colour eg., the various artists in the Helsinki School. I had little interest in the cameraless photogram or directly changing the surface of unexposed photographic papers by burning, soaking, inscribing them etc as did Marco Breuer.
Could abstraction work now by returning to back and white film? So after Leica replaced the damaged range finder of the M4 I decided to experiment by using 35mm black and white film. I was more or less picking up from where I'd left off prior to the photographic culture's shift to digital technology in the first decade of 21st century.
I had stopped photographing in 35mm black and white in the 1990s when the range finder of the M4 was damaged and it could not be repaired in Australia. Since my return to photography around 2006 I have only photographed with 35mm in colour using an M4-P rangefinder.
My Leica M film rangefinder is locked in the past. I bought the analogue rangefinder on the basis of craftsmanship in the 1970s when it was already being marginalised by the innovative, Japanese SLR cameras. In 2022 the film M is technologically obsolete but it works.
I am no True Believer in Leica, its myths or seductive mystique. What I currently have is a well made, vintage film camera with a minimalist industrial design that requires a considered approach to photographing the world around me.
This picture was made in 2021 when I was starting to photographically explore the Spring Mount Conservation Park in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.
Spring Mount is a local stringybark conservation park in the ranges that run alongside the Inman Valley. It lies between, and separates, the Hindmarsh Tiers and the Inman Valley.
I purchased my silver Leica M4 rangefinder in Melbourne in the late 1970s. It quickly became my walk around camera and I became very comfortable with a rangefinder as opposed to the then popular and more versatile single lens reflex film cameras. Unfortunately, the Leica's rangefinder was damaged when it fell to the ground in Brisbane around 2011. The camera strap broke and the camera hit the concrete floor with a thud. I then lost it for around 10 years or so.
It was found in 2021 and in early 2022 I sent it to Leica in Germany to have the rangefinder repaired and the camera serviced. I then bought a second hand, modern Summicron-M 35mm f/2 lens.
Despite being made in the 1960s this 60 year camera now looks and works as if it were new. I could see why it's classically minimal, industrial design or aesthetic would appeal to collectors; and why it has a much higher monetary value today than a contemporary digital camera. (The Leica's value keeps on increasing).
I started photographing with the unmetered Leica M4 using black and white film in a very modest way this year --the M6 was the first metered M rangefinder (manufactured between 1984 to 2003). I made photos using Ilford HP 5 Plus film whilst I was on the various poodlewalks in the local bushland. This one of bark along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga is one of the early photos that I made:
This picture of bark hanging from a branch of a pink gum was made on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla. The walk was along Baum Rd in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.
The picture was made around the same time, and in the same location, as this picture. Both pictures were made using an old, hand held, film Leica rangefinder camera during the Covid-19 lockdown. The negatives from the anachronistic, unmetered, mechanical simple Leica M4-P were scanned using Plutek Opticfilm 8100 scanner, which is a dedicated 35mm scanner. The scan is a piece of raw material, for later editing in Lightroom.