This was made whilst I was on a Mallee Routes phototrip in the Lower Darling region of NSW in 2019. The text on the Wentworth road sign says, "How many times have you been cooked out this month"?
The picture references the traditional Leica aesthetic: quick glimpses of lived life taken with a small, discrete camera. That 35mm aesthetic of the non-metered all mechanical M is about simplicity and ease of use with its emphasis on functionality, ergonomics and the feel in the hand. This aesthetic was at a time --the early 1970s--when rangefinder technology was seen by both professional and amateur as an antiquated throw-back with numerous disadvantages. Photographers had started to shift to the Nikon SLR F system with its excellent but affordable optics.
I was driving back to the camp at Wentworth after I'd been photographing the dry river bed of the Great Darling Anabranch. There was no water in the river. There is a long term drought in this region, and most of the water in the river had been extracted by the upstream cotton irrigators. There is little water for the towns and properties along the Anabranch and the Lower Darling rivers.
