Paul Blackmore’s “Heat” kicks off Head On 2019
Sydney-based photojournalist Paul Blackmore’s exhibition Heat has kicked off the 2019 Head On photo festival to a very warm reception at Bondi Pavilion.
Blackmore’s work – the product of four consecutive summers photographing around Sydney’s beaches examines Australian coastal culture and vernacular with the resultant body of work being highly praised by some of the country’s foremost street and documentary photographers.
Building on a tradition of ocean-focused work in Sydney established by Max Dupain, Jonny Lewis and Trent Parke, Heat, as Blackmore explains, was the result of “wanting to look at the kinetic theatre that goes on around city beaches. Where Australian culture shows off.”
As a ritualistic swimmer himself, Blackmore says that the work partly came about from his own constant proximity to the ocean, initially making observations on the rocks at Clovelly but over time moving closer towards the ocean and eventually immersing his Leica XU in the surf. “I’ve always thought of getting in the water as a sort of circular baptism; you know, you get in there, you reconnect with yourself and other people and the natural world,” hey says. “So I have always had that amazing connection with water as a sort of psychological space and that physical need to go swimming.”
Describing the harsh light and forms that play out in the work as “haunting reminders of our cultural and spiritual reliance on our beaches”, Blackmore says that whilst he was both informed and inspired the likes of Parke and Autio, he was careful to look for an original angle when going about making his work. “Obviously, I’m aware of and have been inspired by people like Max Dupain and Trent Parke but I wasn’t consciously setting out to do something like that,” he says. “That modernist sort of Max Dupain thing; I think I’ve built on top of that as well with those sculptural forms that bodies can become in harsh light.”
With the series also being published as a book, Heat becomes the third iteration in a series of publications from Blackmore closely examining the interface between people and their natural surrounds, most often focusing on water. In this regard, as Blackmore explains, while the work leans heavily on a romanticised version of Australians’ subconscious connection to the ocean, it doesn’t omit a political streak as his examination of water ultimately also hints at themes of climate change and a warming planet: “You know, David Malouf said that most Australians are sea-dreamers, we face outwards across the ocean. And definitely with the climate change angle I think the work hints at the sort of fragility of nature and how we fit into it.”
Order Heat, here: https://www.paulblackmore.com/store