I’ve had a kind of bloggers block over the last few weeks, except writing is not the problem; images are. I’m still struggling to find my eye in an Australian context. I decided to look at some photos I’d taken in Australia over the last few years for inspiration. I came across a series I started working on about 5 years ago I called Australian Gothic. While the images of Australia that populate ad campaigns and soap operas focus on beautiful beaches, lovely sunshine and suburban bliss there is also a literary and filmic tradition that focuses on Australia as a harsh, uninhabitable place full of the unknown. Think Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wolf Creek or Mad Max and you will get a sense of Australia not as a country of endless fun and relaxation but as a harsh, unnerving and ghostly environment. Even the idea of Australia as a place of endless sunshine is turned in on itself, as it becomes something that is overwhelming, blinding, scorching and fatal. There is also a tradition of Gothic architecture that peppers the Australian landscape; churches, schools, tin sheds, rusty windmills and gargoyled buildings. This was the Australia I wanted to reference when I took these photos and I think it might be the one that helps me look through the lens again.