This working life

Issue 66 of 40 South Magazine

The first in-print publication of pictures from my project This Working Life has just been published over 8 pages in the portfolio section of the highly respected Tasmanian magazine 40° South. If you are interested in Tasmania and all things Tasmanian, subscribe now.

To coincide with this I’ve posted some more of the pictures here. If you want to know more about this project please visit my This Working Life blog.

“Looking at pictures of work can provoke thoughts and feelings about work and life…it leads each to ponder in our own personal terms, not just the subject at hand but the universal nature of human existence.” Ferdinand Protzmann The World of Work.

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

Gypsy Bar, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Theodore Roosevelt

Nullarbor, South Australia

Perth, WA

Hobart, Tasmania

“Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world.” Sir Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

Sydney, NSW

Armidale, NSW

Byron Bay, NSW

Rottnest Island, WA

Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne

“The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Bourke Street, Melbourne

Job seeker, Hobart

Collins Street, Hobart

Hobart, Tasmania

Brisbane, Queensland

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. 
- Buddha

Brisbane, Queensland

Cambellfield, Victoria

Kimberley, WA

Kalgoorlie, WA

Melbourne, Victoria

Hobart, Tasmania

“I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life.” Bill Clinton

MONA visited, revisited, revisited and revisited…

Despite the howls of protest and criticism from more conservative professional museum curators, they cannot put down the overwhelming success of David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart. Walsh himself, has described it as “a subversive adult Disneyland”.

It is not without controversy, attracting such negative comments in TheMercury  as “You sick bastards. That place better be shut down soon. What is the world coming to? What will the next generation of children turn out like after viewing such revolting, hellish ‘art’. They’ll be torturing mutilating murderers.”

“Mr Walsh has made a very big mistake in setting up this thing in Berridale. It’s going to become the biggest white elephant ever in Tasmania. I see it as an extension of the sewerage treatment plant that’s situated right next door to the “museaum”. Both facilities are full of excriment that should be flushed away. It’s a joke people. A joke.”

On the other hand, there are many who actually get David Walsh’s vision and are rewarded and stimulated by it: “WOW, regardless if you love it or hate it, you have to agree this will put Hobart on the map of Australia for the world to see. It is probably the biggest push the city has ever had to come into this century and compete with the bigger cities around the world. Its private, yet free. What a selfless visionary Walsh must be. I wish I still lived in Hobart to see this gem. This “museum” might go a long way to help Hobart lose its “redneck” image to the rest of Australia. Congrats Walsh.”

Since its opening last January, more than 350,000 visitors have passed through its dramatic reflective portals. Last week, I made my fourth visit and again drew deep satisfaction, enjoyment and visual stimulation from being challenged by MONA. Here are some pictures from my last two visits:

The Museum of Old and New Art as seen from the Derwent River © Rob Walls 2011

Visitors to MONA reflected in the mirrored wall of the main entrance © Rob Walls 2011

Bit.Fall by Julius Popp

White Library by Wilfredo Prieto, a library of blank books, blank pages

A visitor viewing Philip Brophy's interactive Body Malleable

China-China - Bust 82 2004 by Ah Xian

Sidney Nolan's massive and magnificent, Snake

Artifact by Gregory Barsamian

After three hours of visual stimulation even the tools and ladder of the exhibition installers begins to look like an installation © Rob Walls 2011

More visits planned in coming months…

Gay marriage in Australia?

OK, this is not about photography, but then I never promised this blog would be entirely about that subject. Just felt I had to share this news.

With man mountain, world champion, Tasmanian axeman coming out in support: gay marriage in Australia? A done deal!

http://www.theage.com.au/national/world-champ-axeman-backs-gay-marriage-20110909-1k11r.html

David Foster, world champion, Tasmanian axeman comes out in support of gay marriage.  © The Age

Oh, how my late and sadly missed friend, Richard Beckett (aka Sam Orr), author of “Axemen, Stand By Your Logs”, a history of woodchopping in Australia, would have delighted in the delicious irony of this.

Winter harvest…

© Rob Walls 2011

Like a Japanese print

black currawong

stealing ripe persimmon

in my garden this morning…

For the bird watcher, these are Strepera fuliginosa. More can be read about these very clever birds here.

MONA Museum of Old and New Art

While only indirectly involved in any way with photography (it is involved with this particular photographer’s life), I visited the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart today.

To say that this privately funded institution is challenging, exciting, controversial is understatement indeed. That it exists in the backwater of Hobart is surprising…but then the whole raison d’etre behind entrepreneur, David Walsh’s generous enterprise seems to be surprise. Now all I’ve got to do see how many visits I can fit in before I set off on my trans-continental odyssey for This Working Life on April 4th.

Waterfalls and wilderness – part 2

Russell Falls, Mt Field National Park, Tasmania

While setting up to photograph Russell Falls again, a walker stepped into frame to take a shot and I used him for scale. It was only after I took the shot that I realised the mist drifting from the falls onto my lens, gave this shot a kind of primeval quality so characteristic of Tasmanian rain forest. You almost expect dinosaurs to walk into the scene.

The Eucalyptus regnans is one of the tallest trees in the world. This particular example is nearly 80 metres tall. It has been lopped several times in gales. Its first branch is 38 metres from the ground…and it’s still growing!

Self portrait with forest giant, Mt Field National Park.

Russell Falls, Mount Field National Park, Tasmania

Horseshoe Falls, Mount Field National Park Tasmania

Fungus on decaying log, Mount Field National Park, Tasmania

Maybe I can shoot landscape after all…

I’ve never been much good at landscape photography. Which kind of poses the question as to why I would live in such a geographically beautiful island as Tasmania. But I’m a city boy. Nature to me is too often untidy. There’s always something in the frame that grates on my neat-freak tendencies. However, after the wettest winter in more than half a century, I figured there might be a fair bit of water flowing over the falls in Tasmania’s Mount Field National Park. I wasn’t wrong.

Though the weather was still pretty marginal (overcast and showery), I decided to use the opportunity to shoot some HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures. The first of these of Russell Falls, shot from under the deep shade of rainforest and giant Dicksonia Antractica ferns is made up of two exposures. The second of Horseshoe Falls is from a range of five exposures.

I’m so pleased with the results, I’m going to go back in a couple of days to shoot when there is sunshine, to see how that works. Maybe I can get a handle on this landscape lark after all.

Russell Falls from under the fern canopy, two exposures.

Horseshoe Falls, four exposures

Horseshoe Falls, three exposures