After I left living in Adelaide's CBD and moved down to live on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in Victor Harbor I started to photograph the remnants of the local roadside vegetation. The bushland and the roadside vegetation in this region largely consisted of pink gums (Eucalyptus fasciculosa) and grass trees (Xanthorrhoea). I was finding the remnant bush and the sporadic road side vegetation hard to photograph as it was so messy and dense.
This was one of my first large format photos of roadside vegetation in colour:
I showed this image, and the companion one over the page, to colleagues in Adelaide. They were quite scornful and dismissive; a reaction that was made without giving any considered reasons for why these images needed to be rejected as of no interest. Was this because the images were in colour? Or that they mediocre, images lacking creativity? Formless and pretty? The subject matter was unfashionable? The subject matter was regional and not universal? I had to guess the reasons.
I did suspect that making landscape photography was a no no in art circles as straight landscape photography was considered to be culturally conservative as well as being very unfashionable. It was old fashioned and so akin to living in the past. Landscape photography was largely irrelevant in the art world, and there is a disconnect between popular landscape photography and art photography.