The turn to privacy can be seen in the re-embace of home cooking, the organic,  and slow food as a reaction to an industrial  food system degraded by pollutants and chemicals and corporate neglect. Many  are looking to domesticity in search of a simpler, more sustainable, more meaningful way of life because the government regulators cannot be trusted.  

Another return to privacy is  taking snapshots  for oneself on daily walks --such as the  Adelaide-Himeji Garden in Adelaide's south parklands. It is an activity that we perform  for our own satisfaction and pleasure whilst ignoring  the work of self-perfection that contemporary capitalism expects of us in public life. 

The Himeji Garden, which  was a gift from Adelaide's sister city, Himeji in 1982,  celebrates Adelaide's sister-city relationship with the ancient Japanese city of Himeji.  The enclosure, which  is one of only a few classical Japanese Gardens in Adelaide,  blends two classic Japanese styles, the lake and mountain garden and the dry garden. It is unimpressive. 

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This photo  book started out as  a Leica blog  of  the pictures that I'd taken with my Leica rangefinder--- a M4-P.   The blog form means that its roots are internet based.  In contemporary visual art, Internet-based art forms have for the most part remained in a media art ghetto with little exposure within the system of contemporary art biennials and contemporary art centers. 

I'd  primarily used the Leica M4-P  with a Leica Summicron 50mm f2.0 rigid lens.  Most of the early work with the camera was done using black and white  film (Kodak Tri- X) which I developed myself in a wet darkroom with chemicals.  

The Leica M system is seen as a reportage camera,  rather than a  versatile all-round camera, but the  tight integration of body and lens ensured  good performance, and  Leica's  focus was on simplicity of use and on basic photographic functions helped define the snapshot style of picture taking.  

Photography now means digital photography. Continual change  in digital technology and shortening of product cycles  is the rule,  and  Leica has responded by  shifting from  an engineering to a luxury company with  most of its new products now  positioned in the luxury class. In this  they follow the design rulebook of Apple. 

I gave up  film photography  when I was doing a PhD  at Flinders University of South Australia in the 1990s  and whilst I was  working in Canberra. Towards the end of the Canberra gig  I slowly came back to  digital photography to build a life after politics.  I started using the  M-system  with colour film,  which was processed and scanned by a pro-lab, with the  pictures uploaded to Flickr and a photoblog which are then  viewed on a computer screen. This digital  workflow is different to the experience of classical  film  photography, and it indicates  how  the Internet has changed the way we understand photography.

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