My proudest achievement in publishing was sadly born on the back of an impactful mental health crisis mid-way through the covid pandemic.
After a stressful first year I suffered a mini breakdown, which was not uncommon for a large majority of the population at the time. I had always wanted to shoot a rural portrait book and had scouted locations for a while before finding this property in the wine regions of South Australia.
When I first saw photos of the property, the lake was full of water, the surrounding areas were lush with growth and the greenery was breathtaking. Fast forward to summer and the weekend of the shoot, I discovered the hot weather had turned the lush greenery into all shades of brown and russet, while the lake was in fact a dam….a half empty, muddy slosh.
They say some things are just meant to be, as was the case here. Over the course of the 3 day weekend, myself and 7 male entertainers and dancers spent our time drinking, sharing stories, talking through our mental health struggles and general just being boys. Amongst all of this I was also taking photos.
The end result was thousands of shots in some stunning locations, which after countless hours of selecting and editing resulted in….
‘THE LAKEHOUSE’
The fellas all kindly donated their time in an effort to raise money for Beyond Blue, a men’s charity near to all of our hearts, to which proceeds from the sale of the book will be going to.
I can never thank them enough for their time and energy.
BODY…of work was my second published book, and was created as an anthology of sorts. Work from the previous 8 years has been carefully curated to show my growth as an artist, as well as the evolution of my work in whole.
The book features a wide range of models in both studio as well as stunning locations.
As always, I can’t express just how thankful I am to my models for working with me, quite a few have been shooting with me for years and it is fascinating to see their growth in that time as well.
MASC was my first published book and foray into publishing itself. It started by someone asking me if I was Masc (masculine) on a dating app. This really got my mind swirling, what is masculine? what is feminine? Who defines the attributes that constitute both, and how do we place ourself within those sometimes very broad definitions.
I started out by surveying what people thought the terms masculine and feminine meant to themas they relate to men. After collating the results I then scouted for my models and shot what they had expressed in their answers.
The result is 160 pages of beautiful imagery portraying a wide scale of masculinity, everything from young angelic boys to big burly and furry muscle men.
The book is an insight into what masculinity really means and how it is not defined by the traditional thoughts we were brought up with.
