Most of my large format photography has consisted of isolated photos that stood on their own or were a strand in a broader project such as Mallee Routes. It was significant step to construct a project or a series, with large format photography after the decline of modernism and based on the rejection of modernism's emphasis on artistic subjectivity. Thus John Szarkowski's conception of photography turned the act of looking and choosing into an aesthetic gesture that prized, above all, the unique vision of the person behind the camera. Szarkowski's efforts to establish a legitimate place in the art world for photography by formally aesthetic criteria resulted in photography as an autonomous modernist art becoming a medium of subjectivity.
These depopulated photographs were conceptual in orientation, namely '10 silos on the Mallee Highway', which emerged from driving along the Mallee Highway when I was travelling from Adelaide to Canberra and vice versa. The title was formulated in advance of taking the photographs, which were constructed as black and white and made with an old 8x10 SuperCambo monorail that I had owned from the 1980s. I had bought it cheap, but had barely used it since, because it needed a new bellows.
I acquired a new bellows around 2011 and started photographing the silos shortly afterwards when I was living in Adelaide. I would camp at places like Ouyen or Murrayville so that I could wait for suitable conditions with respect to clouds and soft light. I followed a predetermined route in my car and systematically and photographed just the silos.
Carina, Mallee Highway, Victoria
I had photographed around 6-7 of the silos and, though I exhibited some of them in a small exhibition, the project was never finished. I became sidetracked by Mallee Routes and forgot about it. I have decided to ease my way back into photography after the 2 year layoff by completing the project as a photobook.