MALCOLM EDWARD-COLE - PHOTOGRAPHER BEGA EXHIBITION - ARTIST STATEMENT

I live in the rolling Adelaide Hills. The landscape is soft and green in winter and hot and brown in summer. I came to the Narooma photo shoot with little expectation of the magnificence of the coast and hinterland. I was surprised and delighted. It was when I was confronted, on the beach, with an incoming storm front that I found my theme for the shoot. Suddenly there was about me the amazing, awesome power and majesty of nature. In the space of half an hour I had been captivated and had captured what was overwhelming to me. The towering movement of clouds and sky. The rolling power of the moving ocean with all its tumult of waves in constant motion.

I have been taking photographs seriously for over twenty years. Photography is my passion, and my passion is concerned with beauty. What I present with my work is what was before the camera, digitally coaxed and dressed to enhance the beauty and emotion that I could see and feel as I looked. In camera I carefully frame what I see. In post-production I adjust contrast, brightness and colour. I endeavour then, to reproduce my original vision, translated to a photographic print. I want my work, my photographic art, to reflect the beauty of the natural world. I am increasingly interested in abstracting the landscape. I mostly work in monochrome, sometimes with a colour cast, and sometimes in full colour. I hope that viewers will sense what I felt at the moment of exposure and perhaps find another way of looking at the world.

Tusche Trees celebrates a deep personal love for trees. It questions our attitudes to them and the way we treat them. It explores my earlier work in traditional drawing with pen & ink and in printmaking, lithography and etching in particular. Tusche ink is an incredibly greasy ink we use in lithography that just doesn’t mix with water. Drawing on a limestone block with tusche ink is an incredible experience. I get so excited when my photography takes on printmaking qualities. Hints of drawing and painting with different media is so often present. Drawing with light and a camera is a tool that has replaced pencil, pen, charcoal, and brush. Trees represent the whole ecosystem to me. The tree of life is an important historical symbol. Trees live in cooperative communities and in symbiotic relationships with the whole planet. We owe every breath of air to their presence and yet we cut them down with gay abandon. At this point in time whilst the world is in ecological crisis with climate change and deforestation, these artworks ask you to consider our terrible our lives would be without trees https://lensjournal.com/

It is fitting I write this on National Tree Day. Whilst we are in this crisis of global warming that we have caused we need to do things to help. Mass plantings of trees and the end of the senseless deforestation of old growth forests, a turn to ecologically sound managed forestry, and a deeper understanding of how important our ecosystem is to our health and well -being is our only sensible way forward.

ABOUT LEN METCALF - the photographer’s photographer

Len began his obsession for photography in the late sixties when his father gifted him his first camera. Growing up in Australia’s spectacular Blue Mountains provided Len with an endless array of incredible scenes to capture. He particularly loves the light and mood of misty wet landscapes, abundant in that region. Naturally, Len pursued a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Photography and graduated with straight distinctions, also receiving the coveted award for ‘Most Outstanding Advanced Colour Photographer’. However, education had also captured Len’s attention as he had been teaching Outdoor and Environmental Education to pay his way through university. This other passion coupled with a growing sense of disillusionment with the art world saw Len excel in the world of education for the next 20 years. During this period, he undertook a Graduate Diploma in Art Education and a Master’s Degree in Adult Education.

His reunion with photography occurred at the conclusion of a three-year lecturing tenure in the Middle East and he found that the love he had for photographing the natural world had flourished while he was otherwise engaged. In 2000 Len opened the Leonard Metcalf Gallery in Katoomba. Visitors to the gallery asked him to teach photography. Combining his flair for both education and photography made perfect sense and hence, Len’s School was created in 2000.

Len has become renowned as a leading photographic educator through teaching, mentoring, and facilitating innovative workshops and tours. His exquisite photographs capture diverse Australian landscapes, from arid deserts and windswept coasts to his backyard in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. He runs his own photography school, has exhibited widely and writes for photography journals around the world.

Len’s work is held in various photographic collections around the world, including the Indian Museum of Photography. He has been represented in Germany by ‘The Art of Wild Gallery’ where he hung next to many of the world’s best landscape photographers. Here in Australia, Len was represented by ‘Shadow and Light Gallery’, in Leura where he hung with Max Dupain.