“... it was after a year in which the ability to perform this best version of myself was stripped. I was at the tail end of one of the longest depressive episodes of my life. I was grieving and raw and angry. Photographing was the only part of my identity that didn't feel bruised, with the camera on me I could retain some semblance of purpose.”

“Energy goes on forever, that’s a fact. Energy goes on forever. And so, although the physical matter will disintegrate as anything would. The actual energy if you like of the soul, of the spirit, just goes on and on and on.”

“Later you had seen a man in a silver gum. You watched him perched on the silver gum’s branch, perhaps in turn being watched by him. All silhouette against a paler sky like a negative.”

“The practice of repeatedly photographing the same place has taught me not to assume that I have exhausted all the options. No matter how many times I've walked through that place, I'm always struck by it, inspired by it, and moved to lift my camera to my eyes.”

“However, I always had the fear that I might go deaf.

The fear that I might lose my hearing and the world of sound.

There, all I could hear were the voices in my head.

I would often dive into the water at the pool in the summer to experience the world without sound.”

“But here, on a cold winter’s afternoon, on the shore of a hypertrophic lake, I feel I’ve entered a cemetery. Many of the trees are dead or dying - beaten and battered - some doubled over from halfway up (the effects of a tremendous wind?) I can’t help but think of a Tibetan charnel ground - an open-air cemetery, where, owing to the frozen ground, the dismembered body parts of the dead are left to lie out in the open - left to be devoured by wild animals or to rot gruesomely into oblivion.”

“But here, on a cold winter’s afternoon, on the shore of a hypertrophic lake, I feel I’ve entered a cemetery. Many of the trees are dead or dying - beaten and battered - some doubled over from halfway up (the effects of a tremendous wind?) I can’t help but think of a Tibetan charnel ground - an open-air cemetery, where, owing to the frozen ground, the dismembered body parts of the dead are left to lie out in the open - left to be devoured by wild animals or to rot gruesomely into oblivion.”

“So perhaps the most complex and entangled of all human processing and response is the data generated by human love. As a species, we are born of water and sunlight, have made our home in a hyper- physicality, and are squarely lining ourselves up, like Thelma and Louise, onto the infinite possibilities of pure data. In many ways, a love fueled consciousness feels like our divine achievement, extending us beyond our bodies and the limitations of gravity.”

“Through Marianna I discovered a new way to look at this familiar world of the family farm. She helped me to understand the present from the past and get closer to the people and place where I grew up, with a deeper knowledge of how life used to be and both the traumas and privilege that made my family who they are today.”

“My work functions at the edges of the documentary practice: especially in the case of military issues, it will never be possible to visualise the picture in its entirety, so I am able – required, almost – to fill in the blanks with as much integrity as possible in terms of connecting very specific scenes in front of me with my broader philosophy about the corrosive cultural effects of being in a state of permanent war.”

“We often went there for the friendliness, the great sushi and the ‘play’ between the family members. Being the gajin in Onishi, the son was allowed to train his skills on our orders but the father was always there watching from the doorframe as his son worked. Unknown to us was whether he was proud of the accomplishments of his son or still not satisfied.”

“I suspect this is a very common occurrence for a lot of artists. Initially drawn by concern, critique or sadness, the process of making something that hits those emotional notes can be satisfying and exciting, but it’s also kind of, well, gross. I don’t like feeling excited to have the chance to photograph something awful, yet I can’t lie and pretend I don’t feel a thrill here and there. I wonder, perhaps, if I’m now too distant from the issue.”

“As with my first visit, I was alone only partly - the occasional fisher or hiker would pass by and, this time, a small group of school aged children and their guide quizzically studying my engagement with a small branch of the yew extending over the footpath. A single sheet of fiber-based silver gelatin paper was clipped to the underside of the branch with a gaffer clothespin, its light sensitive side facing toward the sky.”

“As much as the real drawbacks of the car are plain to see, I appreciated Burt’s simple explanation of what the car meant to him personally. Even while I hope the reign of the car will come to an end, I’m reminded of the complexities of this long relationship. The car is both a source of alienation and connection. It can give us freedom to go anywhere but also force us into gridlock.”

“The story of meeting Yoshito is part of a larger picture of my life and Butoh is perhaps one of the catalysts for me to travel to Japan just after the big earthquake of 2011. That trip ended up changing many aspects of my life but before going, I knew all along I wanted to pay a visit to Mr. Ohno and listen in first-hand about his father and what Butoh represented to the people who started this art/dance movement in the beginning of the 60s.”

“The landscape of the Mallee seems to operate in this constant binary – new and mutable but ancient and fixed, with its shorelines fluctuating back and forth with the seasons for thousands of years. Dotted around the circumference of the Pink Lakes are the remnants of a salt mining industry, once a briefly thriving community that is now a collection of rusted remains and broken jetties that rot in the muddy salt.”

“We kept the construction design simple and documented our observations and interactions within the temporal and spatial phenomenon of the installation inside the room over the period of a week. Within the room we witnessed human and nonhuman daily activities and the change of light during the day as it moved across the inner surfaces of the room.”

“Free from responsibility and no longer having to answer to anyone, I’m able to explore my own psyche and express my state of mind while pointing my camera outward, towards other people, animals or landscapes… basically at everything that draws my attention or speaks to me.“

“The more I visit Mounds Park, the more aware I am of the limitations of vision. As a place that has long aided various kinds of orientation, Mounds Park emphasizes what is beyond the scope of our perceptions, instead of only providing an acute understanding of the surrounding landscape. While it is grounding to literally know where you stand, I always find myself drifting towards thoughts of what is still elusive despite seeing clear visual information.“

“This trip home was the first time that I had seen my mountain, or my river, or stood on my marae. As an adoptee and as a member of the Māori diaspora in Australia, connecting to my whakapapa (ancestral line), continues to be a disrupted, complicated and emotional voyage where information is necessarily gleaned from a range of sources.“ 

“I came to learn this brumby was an aged mare who would have been fleeing from the fire and had died from a lung bleed. The horse was the manifestation of our history, our present and future, tied to our existence and an extension of our actions.“

“Arriving in Shibuya, I was absolutely shocked. You would have thought Japan had just won the World Cup, defeating Brazil 10 - 0 by the level of euphoria on the streets. It was absolute pandemonium.”

“Every generation seem to have a major event that defined the memories of their youth and coming of age. For Americans my age, that event was 9-11. For young people in our current time, it no doubt will be our current pandemic. For Chinese people of my parents’ generation, that event was the Cultural Revolution.”