1 Lake Mungo Sunrise / 2 Altona Coastal Park / 3 Flinders Court / 4 Lake Mungo Sunset / 5 Half Moon Bay I / 6 Sherbrooke Forest / 7 Williamstown Bay

The most recognisable approach to landscape photography is one in which the photographer observes from afar and uses a single-point perspective to capture a scene of atmospheric beauty. This series of pinhole panoramic landscapes is positioned against such a traditional mode of representation.
I enjoy experiencing landscape from within rather than admiring it passively from a distance. I am drawn to move through a landscape’s depths, to seek out the small sights and gradually form a subjective understanding of a complex whole. Landscape experienced in this way provides me with an ideal means through which to explore the ways in which our perceptual processes shape sensory data into notions of place.
When I walk through a location, there is a plethora of visual stimuli surrounding me, shifting with my every step. Instinctively I select what to absorb according to subjective interests, emotions and experiences, and these many sensory encounters amalgamate into an intricate, non-linear yet cohesive understanding of place.
This work is informed by the Gestalt principles of perceptual organisation. Given a cluster of sensations, a human tends to organise them into a ‘gestalt’ (a form or whole). Our brains do not simply register unmediated external information, they firstly filter and from fragmentary data construct meaningful forms. Thus, when I am in a particular location and confronted with the world’s raw materials, I am able to organise them into the perception of a landscape whole.
To photographically represent the complexities of visual experience, I have created these images using a 6-pinhole camera. I use the camera to create ‘in-tin’ montages by opening the holes at different times as I move through a location. As I am drawn to a particular detail or view, so I point my pinhole towards it. In the darkness of the tin, the exposures come together on the film to create a serendipitous composition of place.