The photographs on this page were made between 1990 - 2002. One page seems such a small thing compared to the large amount of effort that film technology required to produce prints on paper. Nor does it properly represent the level of work that has been required to transfer analogue images into the new digital age for this website.
Thus 2002 has come to Symbolise the pre digital world. Many of the images are film prints scanned into digital and thus printed versions may not be available.
At Edith Cowan University the Photography Lecturers suggested that each roll of film garnered about 2 or 3 publishable images. James' view is that people who have a limited budget are more careful stewards of their resources and that in his experience it was possible to obtain up to 90% success rate if the shoot could occur with camera settings standardised for each print and more importantly the photographer took great care with the composition of each frame.
Add to this the complication that in the era 1990 - 2002 having a personal dark room was a specialised and expensive luxury for people without the resources of commercial media organisations. Finding a film developer was a difficult task and often times the compositional values of an image were not the same as those expressed in the print.
Further, black and white film was printed out on standardised colour paper which gives a somewhat interesting grey/blue tonal structure to the photographs. In the years 1990 - 2002 there was not the modern luxury of open source photomedia technology that exists today, thus the black and white images in these archives have undergone a complex process from the film development and printing to this editing which has allowed real black and white to be produced.
The Graduate Diploma of Communications in Photomedia degree James completed in 2002 provided access to professional darkrooms and this period of time provided the opportunity to produce some of the images that remain his favourites to this day.
Each of the people in these photographs meant something in the artistic journey and skills development process. The collaboration required models with patience and it was most successful with those with a passion for the visual arts. It turns out that being able to subject themselves to being told what to do and how to do it in an unknown vision is harder than you think.
James is thankful to the models who, with respect, kindness and generosity of spirit, have helped him craft his photomedia skill set and who have contributed to the human search for meaning that underpins the work.
Above: These images were made between 1997 & 2002 using film technology and primitive digital cameras that were new at the time. More images are being curated for this page.
