Hands Up

This week someone asked me to write a bio about myself and what inspires my photography. Boring as a boat of full of backgammon. The indigenous artists of Australia had the right idea - make a stencil from your hand and bugger off to let someone else tell the story.



"Photography was a creative pursuit against a background of boring career moves. I quit graduate school after studying molecular biology, became an IT expert during the dot.com boom and then dropped out of organised society to live life among the barristas of Melbourne's inner suburbs. Finally when my kidney could stand no more coffee I returned to the camera and discovered that photography is more than an art form, it's a story telling device. Travel photography is not about beautiful pictures for the sake of a beautiful picture, it's about revealing insight into the lives of people the rest of us have never known.

My first exhibition was in 1994, a collection of leaves shot in the outback between Melbourne and Alice Springs. It was all about the little things - sticks, mud and sand. 14 years later my work is being exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne as part of a travelling photo collection. The theme hasn't changed much, except I've found bigger
meaning behind the little things. Sticks can be used as brushes to paint rock art, sand makes an oven for cooking bush-tucker and mud is an indicator of where we sit in the cycle of seasons.

hmmm, contrary to my highest expectations I really did get a little wiser with age. Somebody should write my high-school teachers and let them know their efforts were not completely wasted."