The photographs featured in Arcadia Del Sud were originally taken in the Melbourne suburb of West Heidelberg in the 1960s. They are pictures of my family soon after we migrated to Australia from Italy in 1961. In 2003 I reworked the original negatives and entered seven of them in the Leica/CCP Documentary Photography Award. I was awarded the Australia-wide prize from a field of over 350 entries. In 2005 Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Photography at NGA, wrote a critical essay, partly about this body of work and its place in contemporary Australian documentary photography.
(31.8 × 27.0, 58 pages)
ISBN 9780980774726
In Narcissus I have gathered in one place some of the self-portraits discovered in the accumulation of photographs I have kept since my late teens. I contrast these with photographs taken of me by others. Freud makes the point that too much of a narcissistic attitude is detrimental to our well being but just enough self-love can help one survive and grow. Reflecting on these self-portraits I realize how important photography was to me for maintaining my mental well being during a difficult transition in my life.
(31.8 × 27.0, 94 pages)
ISBN 9780980774757
Flush is the documentation of an ongoing project to recover plastic cordial containers washed ashore on the banks of the Yarra River, Port Melbourne. I have been searching for, finding and collecting these containers since 1990. So far I have found over 40 different designs including kangaroos, koalas, guns, hand-grenades and missiles. I scan these items at high resolution. The files are then output as chromogenic prints and exhibited. I am still finding containers bearing the fluid ounce markings in 2011 even though imperial measures were phased out in Australia in 1974. This indicates that they could have been ‘floating’ in the environment for almost four decades. The scans of over 40 plastic cordial containers are reproduced in this volume.
(31.8 × 27.0, 96 pages) ISBN 9780980774733
In 1972 I photographically documented two projects by conceptual artist Simon Klose. The negatives were then filed and forgotten about. In 2010 a chance encounter with an NGV International photography curator led me to discover that the documentation photographs I had shot in 1972 would be part of a retrospective exhibition on conceptual art. This volume, with collaboration from Simon Klose, reproduces those photographs in a new context.
(31.8 × 27.0, 56 pages)
ISBN 9780980774771
Sub-Urban Shadow-Plays documents a series of staged portraits of some of my friends, photographed naked, behind a screen. Each mise en scène was discussed by me with my sitters in pre-production. On the day of the shoot the sitters brought to the studio as many or as few props as we had discussed. The portraits were shot over a nine month period and were first exhibited in 2005.
(29.9 × 29.9, 80 pages)
ISBN 9780980774740
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I don’t know much about cricket. I played soccer when I was growing up in Italy. When I arrived in Australia it took me a while to learn English. Maybe that’s why cricket never appealed. Howzat? Silly mid-on. Yorker. Dibbly-dobbly and out for a duck? It was all gobbledegook to a kid who couldn’t speak English.All this changed when, in 2003, a friend gave me an unexpected gift of 16 cricket balls.
(31.8 × 27.0, 40 pages)
ISBN 9780980774795
This volume is a record of experiments using an A4 flatbed scanner to make photographic-style portraits. I am fascinated by the scanner as a substitute for the camera. Over the years I have scanned small three dimensional objects by placing them directly onto the flatbed– nothing unusual about that. However, I have also positioned the scanner vertically on a stand and scanned people’s portraits from 50 cm up to 120 cm away, using scan-times of one to nine minutes. When using a scanner in this way, the subject needs to be independently lit using studio lights. Over 60 portraits are reproduced.
(19.7 × 24.8, 80 pages)
ISBN 9780980774702
Fotografics from Italy 1983 documents, through the reproduction of more than 50 photographs, my impressions of my country of birth after a 10 year absence. This work comprises the first solo photography exhibition I ever held. The work in the book is significant to me because it was during this project that I realized I had repressed my Italian cultural roots after arriving in Australia as a child of 12. This realization made me reconnect with my Italian heritage in a positive way.
(29.9 × 29.9, 116 pages)
ISBN 9780980774719
This volume proposes a new kind of photographic family album where material from inherited family photo‑albums can be integrated with current family photographs to provide younger generations in my extended family with a photo-historical perspective.
(19.7 × 24.8, 80 pages)
ISBN 9780980774702