Surfer Galahad
I picked up the basics of film in Saigon, where I’ve been living and teaching for the last couple of odd years. It’s probably one of the few places left where shooting and developing are cheaper than a cup of coffee. (The coffee’s good over here, too). Being a teacher, the holidays have been pretty generous, which is when I’m able to get out and about with my film cameras. I tend to carry around a big SLR and a smaller point-and-shoot that can fit in my pocket. I’m also pretty disloyal with film stocks, jumping between whatever is cheap, cheerful, and in plenty, but generally I’ll have a go at anything I can get my hands on and see what results come back from the lab. It’s a good way to learn. I’ve been shooting film for more than five years now, but I’m still learning. You never know what you’re gonna get with film. That’s the fun of it. It’s all risk and experimentation.
For this series, on a summer trip back to the South Coast (I hail from Wollongong), I was using the imposing Nikon F3, which is a tank of a camera, and the boxy little Canon Autoboy, which is pure joy. Visiting home after making my bread and butter in Asia for so long, some things really jump out a me. Things that I may not have picked up on so easily before. It’s easy enough when you’re living in it every day of your life, but when you’ve been deprived of it for long enough, of the preternatural light, of the gradations of colour, of the escarpment and the sea, the abundance and the simple largeness of it, you find it’s quite astounding, really, when you’re back in it. It’s like learning again and again to see the place you’re from. It’s something I’m always chasing after, trying to pin down on film whenever I’m back. I’ve travelled to many places now, from Petra to the Himalayas, but home is always something special. Words just fall off it, really, but film can sometimes get close. Although when it does it can still feel more like a happy accident than original intention. The way the chemicals band certain colours together, it’s like a kind of poetry to me. How it simplifies things in a way that mysteriously adds depth when it ought to do the opposite. But that’s film, the unpredictability, the magic of it.
