By Dongyun Kwon
The new exhibition Thru The Lens My Place, My People is now available at YAVA Gallery and Arts Hub in Healesville showcasing photographs of how photographers look at the world with a particular eye.
The photographers in the exhibition present their own interpretations of their place and their people.
Photographer Khoi Bui said his place is where he feels comfortable in his mind.
“I want the audience to feel intimacy, closeness and belonging through my photographs in this exhibition,” he said.
“I want them to feel comfortable looking at them and feel like they are the places that they want to be in for a few minutes.“
One of Bui’s photographs in the exhibition The Winemaker was taken at Christmas lunch last year.
“The person, who is a winemaker, is opening his own wine,” Bui said.
“It [the photograph itself] is inviting people to come and have a glass with me.
“I want the audience to feel the way I felt at that particular time while I was playing violin. I felt like I was going to have amazing wine in this cosy place of this winemaker who is my brother-in-law.”
Another photographer Kate Baker showcases a series of ocean photographs called Great Ocean.
“They are not local but the reason I chose this subject is because I grew up by the ocean and for me, the ocean is a place for freedom,” she said.
“It’s a place where I feel like I completely belong and I am truly myself.
“I produced a paper negative which gives it a very textual field that feels old-fashioned.
“I tried to give it a sense of being timeless so that people will relate to a feeling that they’ve had that expansiveness, that sense of freedom or that sense of something almost in their dream that they remember, as a place of deep comfort.”
Both Bui and Baker have gotten into photography due to their families.
Bui said his grandfather, father and uncle loved playing around with gadgets, old films and cameras.
“When I was young, I looked at their photos and I thought ‘That’s to be overexposed or that doesn’t look good.’ and I felt like I wanted to touch the camera and use it but I couldn’t because I wasn’t allowed to,” he said.
“After I got older and I was allowed to use a camera, I got into photography.”
Baker said she and her brother started taking photographs together underneath the house when she was 16.
“I discovered the magic of putting a white piece of paper into chemicals and seeing a picture emerge,” she said.
“My dad was also into photography when I was young and he still has film cameras.”
The other photographer John Bodin exhibits only one artwork Vale Neville for this exhibition.
Neville was the colourful local identity of Warburton who was a former barrister from Lancashire UK arriving in Australia in 1965.
Bodin said he wanted to show the colourful characters of Warburton.
“The theme of this exhibition is the people or places of the Yarra Valley,” he said.
“Neville was a very talented barrister in his professional life and an extremely good piano player. He was playing Rachmaninoff and also telegraphing him at his home in Warburton.
“Vale Neville is representative of lots of the eclectic group of characters and personalities in Warburton.”
Bodin has been a professional photographer for all his working career and he couldn’t think of himself without photography.
“I’ve always loved visual arts and the photographic medium,” he said.
“When my commercial professional photography career phased out, I concentrated on my personal work and exhibited through various galleries in the city.
