Whim Online Magazine Issue 01 Winter 2013

When did you first discover your love of photography?

I discovered my love for photography when I travelled to France in 2008. I travelled to France for just under one month, with RMIT, to study Impressionism. During my time in France I visited so many galleries and exhibitions, but the one that stood out and enchanted me was the Richard Avedon Retrospective at the Jeu de Paume National Gallery. Richard Avedon's photographs were iconic, intimate and an emotive explosion all frozen in one singular moment in time. His ability to capture all of this in one refined, crisp and minimalistic photograph inspired me to pursue photography within my artistic practice. During my time in France, I also had bought two mini Holga cameras so I pursued some experimental photography, which was the one of the first photography series I completed as a practicing artist.

What particular thoughts or feelings are you trying to convey through your photography and why?

The thoughts and feelings I try to convey within my photography is a nostalgic familiarity, I do this by not linking any of my photographs to a particular time or space. Within my series taken in Finland I used post-print manipulation to blend two photographs together to distort the landscapes, making them transcend into a familiar yet unknown location in time and space. The photographs also have a dream-like quality where memories of places and times overlap to create a dreamlike place. I wanted to create the feeling within my photographs of when you travel to new and foreign places, when you return your memories of places and landscapes merge and become these images based on reality but transform into a dream-like vision.

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