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.  

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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.  

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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.   

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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:

My reaction was well,  now that is rather interesting, but it sure is an expensive way to achieve a different look to film. I do not recommend this kind of alternative processing. Could it be done by processing the negatives in saltwater? 

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.   

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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.  

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 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.  

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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:

I was trying to see the world around me in black and white after years of photographing in colour.  A colour version is here.

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. 

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There is a view that film photography after digitalisation provides a way to create poetry because the convenience of digitalization  also tidies things up, correcting mistakes and eliminating chance.  If this analogue media of contemporary art  involves a backward glance to what has been, as we become ever more immersed in digital media, it also keeps photography  open to chance.  

You don't know what you are going to get with film, even when the photo has been carefully scoped and theme of the shoot  carefully selected.