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View Camera Australia – the story so far
View Camera Australia is the third variation of the site originally set up by photographer Alastair Moore in 2013.
It’s now possible to see the original sites thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
The first site set up by Alastair Moore and co-edited by David Tatnall was Large Format Photography Australia 2013 – 2015.
The second site edited by Alastair Moore and co-edited by David Tatnall was The Large Format Blog 2015 – 2017. Alastair Moore left Australia to return to the UK and closed the site in 2017.
The current site View Camera Australia was set up in 2017 and is edited by David Tatnall.
The sites aims were to promote and showcase the work of photographers working in Australia and New Zealand using large format cameras and to be a source of information and news about photography.
Main photograph top of page. Shane Booth with 8×10 camera, Phillip Island, 2014. Photograph by David Tatnall.
Thank you, David, for your tremendous work and commitment in keeping View Camera Australia going. It continues to provide a unique forum for many photographers who may otherwise have had limited opportunities to share their work. Let’s hope we can look back on another decade in 2034.
Thanks very much Mark.
Hi David,
do you know what has happened to Alastair Moore after he returned to the UK in 2017.
Have you been able to stay in contact? Or has he dropped out of photography?
I did a quick google search but I couldn’t find anything.
Thank you Gary, unfortunately Alastair hasn’t stayed in touch.
Many thanks for this back story David. I found it fascinating.
I didn’t really know the first version of the large format photography web site: –Large Format Photography Australia (2013-2015) I was aware of this forum (http://forum.largeformatphotography.com.au). -What version was this forum attached to, or a part of?
To my suprise my Edgelands series was featured in Large Format Blog ( 2015-17) in May 2016. I had completely forgotten about this. So thank you for the back story.
It does seem that a number of people who appeared, or were featured in the Large Format Blog (2015 – 2017) are no longer active; or if they are active they are not showing their work on VCA. Examples I cam across are David Flanagan (https://www.davidflanaganphotographer.com); Harry Nankin (https://harrynankin.com); Enrico Scotece (https://www.enricoscotece.com); Marius Ruis.
Gary thank you, I don’t know about the forum large format photography, it wasn’t connected to the website. Yes, a good number of photographers have vanished. I have tried to get many of them to contribute to VCA, but without any success.
Hi Gary and David!
Still alive here but not doing a lot of photography at the moment, mainly due to lack of access to a dark room. I bought a DSLR a while ago, which actually was my introduction to photography when I first picked up a camera around 2000ish. But I’ve got to say, I’m struggling to enjoy that aspect of photography and feel like I’ve been spoiled with a view camera.
So the itch for large format photography is definitely there and next year when I plan to buy a piece of property, I expect one part of the house will serve as a darkroom and I’ll get back to it. I’m very much looking forward to the prospect of enjoying photography again!
Thanks for thinking about me and I hope all is well with you both!
Alastair
Great to hear from you Alastair. Thank you for getting this whole online thing happening!