What is a Locograph?

Light is the medium,

a digital sensor the canvas,

locomotion the brushstroke;

A Locograph is similar to an impressionist painting, it is not concerned with accurate details rather the expression of the moment.

LOCO motion
photo GRAPH

movement

                          environment

                & time




Locograph
Locograph

It all started with regular V/line train and bus rides from Melbourne to Natimuk in 2005. I was working for Bambuco, an Australian company that used qualified rock climbers to construct large bamboo structures from Moso bamboo at international arts festivals all around the world. I met the artistic director Simon Barley on one of my trips to Mt Arapiles, home to over 2000 quality rock climbing routes, located 10 kilometres west of the town of Natimuk, and returned multiple times over the following years.

In 2008 following Simon’s unexpected and sudden death I presented ‘The Sickness of Long Thinking,’ a solo exhibition with a series of images taken on all those trips up and back to visit and work with him.

Locograph
Locograph

THE SICKNESS OF LONG THINKING

2008

Goat Gallery

Natimuk, Australia

solo exhibition

The Sickness of Long Thinking

Inspired by a theme featured in a book given to me in 2007 by my partner who read it on his return trip to France from his mother’s funeral. I finished the book on my journey from Africa to his unanticipated funeral two months following. The story is a book of journeys, disappearance, grief, the isolation of living in a remote town, winter partners and the sickness of long thinking.

Australia, The Sahara Desert, West Africa, India, Sri Lanka, South America and Europe.

Artist statement

On countless local, national and international trips in cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, even on the back of a motorbike I have orchestrated a new technique with my 35mm camera to delineate the shifting effect of light and the atmospheric dissolving colours viewed out the window of moving vehicles. Here is where time, movement & environment are merged to make what I call a Locograph.

Time lost when travelling to a destination is often loathed by the average commuter however I’ve learned after repeated journeys of my own, the importance of time and distance between places, like the land we pass by on these trips, we too need time and space for our own evolution before reaching our destination. Without this experience, there is no journey. Without the journey, there is no evolution. 

The images are presented in the same way they were captured. A sequence of snapshots taken much like recording the undeveloped thoughts of a passenger that emerge and evaporate on any given voyage.