Cowboys and Other Country Clichés

When I moved to Yass a year ago, I was determined to avoid photographing clichés of Australian rural life.

How naïve!

While I’ve definitely captured other sides of country living, pictures of “cowboys” — gritty, sweaty and masculine — are inescapable.

At the concurrent Yass Rodeo and Yass Ute Muster on 10 November, I used my trusty Pentax K1000 to photograph Tim Davaris (left) and Dave Willersdorf (right) in Wrangler jeans and felt hats alongside a Bundaberg Rum-themed ute. It’s not their vehicle, but the brand sponsored both events and the boys were sipping the said brew, so it seemed a fitting backdrop.

A bull rider gives his leather glove tooth in the second image, chafing it against the “bull rope” — the rope that wraps around the bull’s body — for a better grip during his upcoming ride. Appropriately, and I’m sure co-incidentally, he does so with a pen of bulls watching.

So it seems I’m learning that country clichés actually do accurately reflect some parts of life in Yass. In fact, judging by the pink plaid shirt and toy Sheriff’s badge I donned for the day, I might even be embracing them!

As an aside, I’ve started using Fujicolor Superior X-TRA ISO 400. I can buy four rolls of this cheap colour film at my local supermarket for the price of one professional colour roll at a camera store (my nearest one is an hour away). I’m pleasantly surprised by the punchy, saturated results.

Red Pony Collage

I’ve just started making my first “altered book”, a multi-media exercise in which an old book is re-appropriated and given new life with a collage of paint, stitching, fabric, photographs and ephemera.

I’m a self-confessed “worry wart”, so have chosen Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living as my canvas. It may have been published in 1948, but the messages in this early “self help” book are still relevant. Not that you can read any of these through my artwork!

I’m using the altered book form as a personal art journal, in which I can let go of my tendency to perfectionism in favour of slapping together elements in a child-like fashion, letting my unconscious dictate anything remotely meaningful. The result is not necessarily pretty, but it’s sure cathartic.

I created the texture in this page with old wallpaper and molding paste imprinted with a piece of broken plastic I found on the road. This is overlaid with fabric from a vintage tie, tissue paper and a photograph I took of a children’s rocking horse in a backyard around the corner from my house. I limited my acrylic paint to brown, yellow, white and blue, along with a snippet of gold from a stamp pad.

Sprocket Hole Santas

This image is the product of my first experiment running 35mm film through my medium-format Truview (Diana clone). It was taken in Canowindra, a rural NSW town best know for its annual balloon festival and museum of fish fossils. Judging by the subject matter, I shot this around Christmas, either in late 2004 or early 2005. The roofs on the main street were lined with these billboard Santas — such a cute treat for people driving through.