SLOW MOVING LANDSCAPES

photographs by Mark Roxburgh

Frances Keevil Gallery 14 - 19 October 2008
 List of Works

1. Aminya, Millthorpe I, 2005, 39 cm x 158 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 3. $1800

2. Aminya, Millthorpe II, 2005, 39 cm x 52 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 5. $800
Aminya, Millthorpe I, 2005.
3. Aminya, Millthorpe III, 2006, 39 cm x 52 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag
paper. Edition of 5. $800

4. Casuarina Forest, Cunjarong Point, 2006, 39 cm x 52 cm, ultrachrome

ink on photorag paper. Edition of 5.
$800
5. Lake Windamere I, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag
paper. Edition of 5. $800

6. Lake Windamere II, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome Ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 5. $800
Aminya, Millthorpe II, 2005.
7. Lake Yarunga, 2006, 39 cm x 52 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag paper.
Edition of 5. $800

8. Old Truck, Aminya, Millthorpe, 2005, 39 cm x 39 cm, ultrachrome ink on

photorag paper. Edition of 5. $600

9. Shearing Sheds, Aminya, Millthorpe, 2005, 39 cm x 39 cm, ultrachrome

ink on photorag paper. Edition of 5. $600

10. Near Bellingen, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

Aminya, Millthorpe III, 2006. paper. Edition of 5. $800

11. Near Bulladelah, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 5. $800

12. On the Road Near Gulgong I, 2008, 39 cm x 177 cm, ultrachrome ink on
photorag paper. Edition of 3. $1900

13. On the Road Near Gulgong II, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on
photorag paper. Edition of 5. $800

14. On the Road Near Mudgee, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on

Casuarina Forest, Cunjarong Point, 2006. photorag paper. Edition of 5. $800
COVER IMAGE: Windamere Dam III, 2008
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 15. Windamere Dam I, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag
paper. Edition of 5. $800

16. Windamere Dam II, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 5. $800

17. Windamere Dam III, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag

paper. Edition of 5. $800
Lake Windamere I, 2008.
18. Windamere Dam IV, 2008, 39 cm x 58 cm, ultrachrome ink on photorag
paper. Edition of 5. $800

Lake Windamere II, 2008.

Lake Yarunga, 2006.

Shearing Sheds, Aminya, Millthorpe, 2005.

Old Truck, Aminya, Millthorpe, 2005. Near Bellingen, 2008.

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Near Bulladelah, 2008. Windamere Dam I, 2008.

On the Road Near Gulgong I, 2008. Windamere Dam II, 2008.

Windamere Dam IV, 2008.

On the Road Near Gulgong II, 2008.

On the Road Near Mudgee, 2008.

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 Slow Moving Landscapes
Our commonest experience of photography is as a record of real things, people
and places. We are inundated with an ever increasing volume of photographic
images of the real through all forms of visual media. The rate at which amateur
and professional photographers alike upload their photographs onto sites
such as MySpace and Flickr, as well as the photographic documentation of
the planet unfolding on Google Earth, suggest that we might eventually run
out of real things to photograph. Cyberspace has become a vast repository of
photographs of the real world, signalling the virtual replication of the actual.
Microsoft’s Photosynth project, for example, is realising this potential by
tagging and spatially aligning different photographs of the same buildings,
drawn from all over the internet, and compiling a simulated 3D replica of those
buildings1.
There is a signiicant body of literature that explores the problematic relationship
between reality and photographic realism but I won’t bore you with it here3.
Sufice to say that many a scholar has argued until they are blue in the face
that they are not really one and the same thing. Despite this, I believe that
much of the photographing public remain impervious to such distinctions
and though I think many of us know that a photograph of a thing is not the
thing itself we accept the photograph of the thing as being a picture of reality.
Szarkowski argues that such an approach to photography sees it as a window
to the world which infers an objective photographic gaze “through which one
might better know the world”4. Such a practice is concerned with the realistic
visual description of the world.
I have long had an aversion to realist photography as a practice for myself, my
early photographic work being studio based photo collage (below).

Such is the extent to which the actual world is photographically available in the
virtual, that on a recent trip to New York I took a camera but did not use it. The
city was so familiar to me from countless photographs, movies and websites
that I could not see the point in photographing the places I visited. Upon
returning home if anyone asked to see my photos I simply went to Google
street view and walked them through the areas I had visited, or logged on
to the websites of the cafes I ate at and clicked through the interior photos
available there. Granted these weren’t photos I took and might not show all I
saw but they suficed as a record of my trip for others to view as I recounted
my experiences there.

There is a puzzling irony that the digital technology that enables us to access
so many photographs of the real world is almost the same technology that
enables us to manipulate the very same photographs in ways that throws
the notion of reality into question. Since the advent of digital photography
(especially in the form of the ubiquitous camera phone), personal computers,

1990

1990
and photo manipulation software we should no longer, if we ever did, trust
the truthfulness of photographs, such is the ease with which we can fabricate
In this work reality was not something I was trying to depict objectively, rather
I was constructing ictional dystopian scenarios as a way of commenting on
reality. Despite our awareness of the capacity to digitally manipulate and
fabricate photographic depictions of reality, Murray argues that many amateur
social issues circulating in the real world. This kind of approach is akin to
photographers remain unconcerned about this question of truth2. In this
what Szarkowski calls photography as a mirror of the world. This infers the
sense much of our photographic experience and understanding is premised
interpretive dimension of photographic practice and sees the photograph as
“relecting a portrait of the artist who made it”5.
on a simplistic and quaint notion that the relationship between the things we
photograph and our photographs of these things is unproblematic. In other
words we have a pretty unshakable belief in the idea that the photograph is a
After taking a break from photography for about 5 years, largely enforced by
picture of reality.
the demands of paid employment and raising a young family, I returned to
it somewhat reluctantly at irst. This reluctance was driven by these same,

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 though somewhat less demanding circumstances; the relative scarcity of
time meant that I had little opportunity to devote myself to the painstaking
nature of my earlier work. The only way out, as I saw it, was to avail myself
of the photographic opportunities of my everyday life. This, regrettably, meant
confronting reality. I did this through the guise of landscape photography;
taking photographs on family trips and holidays. My initial explorations into
this genre took place in 1995 on a trip to Uluru and Kata Tjuta (below).

Germany 2005

Germany 2005
Given my lack of interest
in realism I began working
against the conventions of
landscape photography. Subsequently I re-engaged with the idea of landscape photography upon
These conventions are best returning to Australia. In doing so I picked up where I left off taking a somewhat
typiied in the work of the pictorialist approach to begin with (below left) but then beginning to apply the
high modernist photographer lessons learned on that train in Germany (below right).
Ansel Adams and his pre-
occupation with the accurate
photographic depiction of
scenery through the use
of maximum focus, large

Aminya, Millthorpe 2005

landscape format high
resolution ilm and the
Kata Juta 1995

precise rendering of tonal

range. His virtuosity in the
media resulted in idealised

Ndhala Gorge 2005

landscapes with an apparent high idelity to the vistas he was photographing.
I, on the other hand, was deliberately pushing the image out of focus, using a My recent work has pushed further into
square format camera, and often ignoring vista for detail. Through the use of the realm of abstraction, eschewing
soft focus my early landscapes were reminiscent of 19th century pictorialism, the photograph’s ability to describe in
which coincidentally declined as a photographic movement with the advent of favour of a more evocative kind of image making (below left). My photographs
20th century modernism. are much like the out of focus backgrounds we often see in movies, minus the
actors; fuzzy landscapes awaiting the viewer to project their own story onto. This
I stopped this experimentation not long after I started but came back to it in is a fairly normal response to realist photographs that we have no immediate
2005. It started when I was in Germany for work. I had just purchased my connection to. We automatically try
irst digital camera and decided to play tourist. On a fast train trip to Bremen to make sense of them, to imagine
I attempted to photograph the landscape zooming by. Such was the speed of the stories behind what we see. We
the train that I could not ind a fast enough shutter speed to take a clear photo do this by drawing upon, as much as
without motion blur. Recalling my earlier experiments in landscape I decided we can, experiences that we have
Windamere Dam 2008

to work the other way and began shooting out the window with increasingly had or things that we have seen
slower shutter speeds. I reasoned if you can’t beat something go with it. My that are analogous to the ones we
interest was an exploration of blurring the boundary between photographic see depicted in such photos. In my
legibility and arbitrary abstraction (over). most extreme efforts of abstraction,
where the connection to the real has

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 largely been disconnected, we are not afforded the comfort of drawing on About The Artist
our experiential analogies (below). Instead we are required to exercise our
imaginations a little bit harder for we lack the anchor of the real. Graduating with a degree in visuals art, majoring in photography because he
couldn’t draw for diddley squat, Mark quickly realised that the life of an exhibiting
Setting aside this perhaps somewhat artist was one of low recognition and lower income. Pounding the pavement
dry explanation of the thinking behind for 6 months, hawking his folio to all and sundry, resulted in Mark receiving his
my work, my other motivation is in irst commission for the Good Weekend magazine. From there it was a fast
creating images that are seductive rise to the dizzying heights of freelance photo image making in the world of
and beautiful. I do so as a counterpoint editorial publication. His client list read like a who’s of who of the publishing
to much contemporary art that seems world: Rolling Stone, HQ, Juice, Harper Collins, Time, Allen and Unwin, the list
to reject beauty for dull concept, that goes on. Burnt out by the jet set lifestyle of the rich and famous after 4 years
once deciphered requires no further at the top, Mark sought refuge in the hallowed halls of academe where a life
exploration. I also do so because of the mind beckoned. After being consumed by the bureaucratic maul that
much of the photographic content actually awaited, Mark returned to his love of photography several years ago.
loaded up onto the web by everyday His work since that time has been exploring the boundaries of photography:
users are fundamentally banal seeing how far he can push a photograph away from mechanical depiction to a
pictures of the everyday. I hope that more abstract realm where the image evokes rather than describes it’s subject

Aminya, Millthorpe 2005

if nothing else these photographs matter. He has explored this territory in the genre of landscape photography,
can at least be appreciated for such
a self consciously supericial conceit
a genre that has traditionally held fast to realistic depiction.

as beauty.

Mark Roxburgh Education

Faculty of Design Architecture and Building 2008 Currently enrolled in PhD at the University of Canberra.
University of Technology Sydney
1999 MA (Communication & Cultural Studies), University of Western
October 2008
Sydney, graduated with Distinction.
1988 Grad. Dip. (Professional Art Studies), City Art Institute.
Footnotes 1986 BA (Visual Arts), City Art Institute.
1. http://livelabs.com/photosynth/
2. Murray, S. (2008) Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Solo Exhibitions
Aesthetics, Journal of Visual Culture, 7, 2, pp.147-163. 2008 Slow Moving Landscapes, Photographic Exhibition, Frances Keevil
3. See for example Gallery, October 14 - 19.
Ball, M. S. & Smith, G. W. H. (1992) Analyzing Visual Data. London, Sage. 2007 Light Relief (Part 1) Photographic Exhibition, DAB LAB Gallery,
Baudrillard, J. (1988) Simulacra and Simulations in Poster, M (Ed) Jean Baudrillard Selected
Writings. Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp.169-187. June 14 - August 6.
Emmison, M. & Smith, P. (2000) Researching the Visual: Images, Objects, Contexts and
Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry, London, Sage. Group Exhibitions
Pink, S. (2006) The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. London, 2008 ‘Untitled’ photographs in group show Photo / Not Photo, Design
Routledge.
Winston, B. (1998) The Camera Never Lies: The Partiality of Photographic Evidence, Gallery, University of Canberra.
in Prosser, J. (Ed.) Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. 2007 ‘Untitled’ photograph in Muswellbrook Photographic Prize,
London, Falmer Press. Muswellbrook Regional Art Gallery
4. Szarkowski, J. (1978) Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. New York, 1995 ‘Untitled’ digital photo-collages in group show 2D Computer Art,
Museum of Modern Art, p.25. Digit One Gallery, North Sydney.
5. Ibid.

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 1993 ‘Surface Prejudice’ digital photo-collages in group show Living
Treasure: Older People - New Images, Sydney Town Hall.
1994 ‘We Are All Of Us Marked’ digital photo-collages in group show
Newtown Walking The Street Festival.
1990 ‘The Degenerate Utopia’ mixed media / photo-based collage, in
Pieces of Eight, Bondi Pavilion Gallery.
1988 ‘Public Private’ photographics, in Compact - A Look At Photography
Now, Arthaus.
1988 ‘Untitled’ mixed media / photo-based collage, in Survey; Street Level
Gallery, Penrith.

Exhibitions Curated
2006 Roxburgh, M & Sweetapple, S (Curators) Work/Play 30 Years of
Visual Communication, UTS Gallery. A major exhibition exploring
the visual research methods, and their representation, of 25 visual
communication designers.

ISBN 978-0-646-51674-5
Slow Moving Landscapes
photographs by Mark Roxburgh
14 - 19 October 2008

exhibited at Frances Keevil Gallery

Shop 5 - 6 Bay Village
28 - 34 Cross st Double Bay
NSW 2028
ph: 02 9327 2475
frances@franceskeevilart.com.au
www.franceskeevilart.com.au

curated by Mark Roxburgh

Faculty of Design Architecture and Building
University of Technology Sydney
P.O. Box 123 Broadway
NSW 2007
ph: 02 9514 8903
mark.roxburgh@uts.edu.au

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