Launceston Landmarks

Launceston has a rich and distinctive built environment, and it’s this unique character and ambience that’s provided me with profound inspiration in photographing the city. Launceston Landmarks is the culmination of countless walks exploring and photographing Tasmania’s putative northern capital. After more than two decades of being inquisitive, hundreds of walks throughout the city, countless experimentation, failures and successes, I have come to know Launceston, through the lens of my camera, as though it were my best friend. Whilst many of my projects are conceptual, I wanted this work to be akin to a survey of Launceston’s architectural landmarks, an artistic survey, if you will. The word ‘landmark’ can mean different things to different people. It could be a place featured in promotions or advertising—the face of the city that everyone knows—but for me, landmarks are places that resonate with me or evoke certain memories, feelings and, in a sense, what I find interesting photographically. The body of work that makes up Launceston Landmarks is, therefore, highly personal, and serves as a visual record of the city’s history. 

With such a vast photographic archive, it was an enjoyable challenge deciding what to include in the book. In selecting the photographs, I aimed to isolate particular buildings in order to demonstrate their singular qualities. Simultaneously, I wanted to highlight the richness and variety of Launceston’s architecture, showing that no one period can lay claim to being the definitive representation of the city. As time passes and the built environment evolves, the different architectural styles, along with additions and amendments, reflect how the city and its buildings change to meet the needs of the people who use them. This project required me to visit the same scenes repeatedly, in pursuit of ‘the best shot’. Not only did I want to take photographs without distractions like traffic and people, but I placed great emphasis on capturing the way the light reflected and varied throughout the day and across the seasons. I remember chatting to a street cleaner one morning and they asked how long I’d been documenting Launceston. When I said it was over two decades, they replied, “wouldn’t you have photographed everything by now?” I talked about how important the light is to me and how that changes a scene dramatically. Light plays an integral role in my photography, and it can make or break the way a building looks in the final photograph. Of course in photography there’s no such thing as a final photograph, the perfect shot or the best lighting. The ever-changing light and the potential of a different perspective drove me to head out over and over again, in pursuit of highlighting the sheer beauty of my subjects. 

These photographs are a reminder of how much we take for granted in our everyday lives and how much change occurs over time. More often than not, we fail to notice the transformations from day to day, and we quickly forget what was once there. The power of the photograph to make time stand still when everything else is in a state of flux draws me back to this medium every day. In designing a book layout, one of the key considerations is how to present a body of work in a thematic way. For this book I was inspired by formal city surveys whereby each street would be documented much like the A-Z in a telephone book. I wanted to approach the layout as if I were on one of my walks, often starting in the main thoroughfare of Brisbane Street and working my way through each inner city street, then radiating outwards to the suburbs. This street by street analysis achieves my aim of highlighting the city’s unique architectural diversity. I hope my photography inspires you to take the time to look around the next time you’re in this beautiful city or, indeed, whatever built landscape you’re in, and to see for yourself how it continues to change. In life it’s not what you look at, so much as what you see, that matters most.