Folio: Greg Neville

I have been returning to straight photography after a long period of photo media projects based on appropriation. The traditional challenge of photography, that essential encounter between camera and subject, is a truer test, it has a sort of purity. I enjoy the studio experience with the monorail camera, the props and the lighting, but the still life genre is a demanding one requiring millimetre-precision in all aspects. Add to this the brain effort to create some intellectual coherence with the subject matter and you have a job on your hand.

The photographs were made in 2023 with a 4×5 Toyo View camera on Fomapan 100 film, developed in Rodinal, then scanned and pigment printed on A3+ Gold Fibre Gloss paper. It’s a mixture of analogue and digital, a sort of sweet spot in the photographic medium.

Order and Disorder

The photographs are still lifes employing two collections. One, a number of drawing sheets used by my father when he taught at a tech school in the 1960s. Two, a series of natural wood fragments found on Mount Alexander in central Victoria. The images contrast the form and texture of these elements, looking for a kind of beauty in the decay. They work individually or as a set of twelve photographs where they make a typology, a study of the variations of a single type of object.

The images show a ‘conversation’ between the mathematical geometry of the drawn shapes, and the random forms and textures of the wood. The drawings are in two dimensions, measured with precision according to various Euclidean formulas; they were used to teach trade apprentices. In contrast the three-dimensional wood pieces were made through the processes of nature: sun, wind and rain and the action of mould and bacteria. These forces have created bizarre forms that resemble man-made sculpture but are completely accidental.

Entropy is the underlying tendency in nature towards disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The photographs posit two diverging processes: the creation out of nature of so-called ‘organized systems’ (trees, buildings, cars, paper) through the application of energy and work. And the dissolution of such structures through the inevitable disordering processes of time, decay, weathering and rust.

Still Life

The still life approach lends itself to ideas such as these. From the 1600s Dutch and Spanish painting used it for religious and allegorical meanings. Objects depicted were presented as symbols and viewers could ‘read’ the paintings through their shared knowledge of the symbolism. For example in Vanitas still life, skulls, candles and overturned glasses were used to signify the brevity of earthly life and the need to prepare for the next one.

As someone happily inspired by the history of photography I freely admit to the influence in this project of certain U.S. still life photographers. Frederick Sommer, a friend of Edward Weston and the Surrealist Max Ernst, created a diverse body of work that included still lifes of an unsettling nature made from found objects including rubbish. And Olivia Parker, a still life photographer who has made studied and thoughtful photographs out of varied props which reference time, history and nature.

Photographs from the Order and Disorder series will be shown in a group exhibition at Magnet Galleries in Docklands, Melbourne, 4-25 May. The exhibition will be called The Prahran Legacy: Photography Becomes Art.