Harbour Bridge

The work Harbour Bridge was created just before the turn of the millennium. It is a 4 x 5 Polaroid pinhole image.

I first started using the 4 x 5 pinhole format in the early 90’s. 

I had returned to art school a second time and was studying first year photography with Anne Ferran. A standard exercise in first year is pinhole photography. 

There are some problems encountered with pinhole photography. 

Firstly there is the problem of formatting and framing the image. I solved this by constructing a substitute for the ground glass found in traditional 4 x 5 cameras. I used a semi opaque sheet of tracing paper, that  offered an image clear enough to ‘read’ allowing the image to be formatted.

The second problem was one of exposure. The solution to this was to  add a 4 x 5 Polaroid back to the camera so a shot could be taken and the exposure could be accurately estimated. 

This I eventually found was also a solution to the first problem of formatting as well.

Later, when I discovered a book by the photographer Eric Renner, which delves quite deeply into pinhole photography. He had come up with the same idea and from memory had an elaborate methodology involving light readings to calculate exposures very accurately.

It ended up that I was to be invited to exhibit in 'Why Pinhole' with him in New York. An international survey exhibition of pinhole photography.

One of my driving forces in my work is to break apart and analyse any medium that I am working with. 

Photography is designed to ‘capture’ an image taken from the stream of ‘time’ that we all find ourselves irreversibly immersed in. Everything is flux.

Photography mimics the experience of the ‘present’. It allows us to capture and mimic our perception and this solves a number of problems for us. It captures what seems to be a moment. Of course close analysis of the process reveals a complexity beyond the scope of this essay.

I am fascinated by such problems. One aspect of this is the mimicry of our perception. We constantly try to form the world in our own image. The illusion of time. With everything flowing and ourselves a persistent form that somehow miraculously holds itself together with varying amounts of success is something that ultimately at present is incomprehensible.

So I set about exploring time with my newly devised/found apparatus. It allowed to more easily break free and explore the world beyond the ‘moment’.

At first I started with exposures of a few seconds and of course then tentatively began to expand the exposures. Harbour Bridge is an exposure of some minutes approximately 2 - 3.

It was taken on the south eastern pedestrian path to the bridge looking north. I cannot remember the month or time of year. The problem of memory that photography helps us with.

The bridge is an incredible place. There is the flow and release of an enormous amount of energy there. The mass of the bridge is huge. Yet the vehicles moving across it cause the whole structure to vibrate constantly. This can be seen in the image. Despite the enormous amount of energy released at this site the structure of the bridge holds together in time and through time. Of course there is a constant process of maintenance taking place but the structure will persist beyond many lifetimes serving its purpose of facilitating connections.

However, even the bridges mighty structure will eventually disappear. It will perhaps only exist as a collection of images such as this. It will pass into history as we all do.