Perth Voice Interactive

LANDSCAPE photography is about different ways of seeing, entrant in this year’s Perth Centre for Photography Clip Award Graham Miller says.

“A contemporary view of the landscape rather than a classic chocolate box picture.”

A veterinarian career has taken second place to photography for the Fremantle local and winner of the judges’ commendation award.

He stumbled across his winning snap while waiting for the light to change in the Blue Mountains.

It’s of a metal plaque pointing to various landmarks: it’s so old it’s still in miles.

“Everything was so overgrown you couldn’t see what it was pointing to.”

Scratched with graffiti, and bearing names such as Blackfellows Hill it spoke eloquently of not only the landscape, but of shifts in cultural sensitivity.

“[It] talks of colonisation,” Miller says.

Over the years many have scratched their name onto the plate, adding to its social and cultural interest: “People like to scratch names to say I was here, I see this. They want some sort of ownership.”

The awards have been running since 2008, initially for locals and eastern staters, but with growing interest globally was thrown open to all comers six years ago, PCP chief Christine Tomas says.

Queenslander Emma Louisa took out the top gong, but she was up against entrants from the US and UK, Argentina, Chile and France as well as home-grown photographers.

Her image, which looks like a vast, out-of-control bushfire, or a red-dust storm, wasn’t even made with a camera, but is a photogram, an image created by exposing photosensitive paper to light.

There are plenty of landscapes of beautiful places, that offer limited interpretation beyond whether the viewer has been there or not, but few that challenge,  Ms Tomas says.

“[The Clip Award] is a catchment of different ideas of landscape…they are about challenging traditional notions of landscape photography.”

Encouraging a new generation of landscape photographers, PCP is holding a free kids’ one hour workshop Sunday August 8–check the website for more info.

Or get down to the exhibition which runs until August 18, at 100 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge.

by JENNY D’ANGER