BY TALIA SMITH
1. I have been following your practice for a while now and have admired your approach to photography but as I read you actually originally studied painting. Tell me about your journey to photography.
When I moved from Belgium to Australia I was overwhelmed with the newness of the place I found myself in. Celia and myself were living in a small granny flat in a small town close to Wollongong and being unemployed for most of my first year here, I had lots of time to explore my new habitat. Shortly after moving here I had the idea to start sharing my experiences on a little blog, just so family and friends could stay up to date. On there I used to post pictures of things I discovered. There are so many similarities between my early paintings and what I do with photography these days. There is virtually no difference in the moods and locations (although I’m physically rather far removed from my original stamping grounds.) As long as I can remember I have been driven by a strong urge to explore my surrounds. As a child I often wandered off in the field behind my parents’ house looking for a abandoned shelters, shotgun cartridges, ponds etc. In my head I made like a treasure map of all the cool spots and whenever a friend would come over I would take them to the places I discovered.
© Wouter Van de Voorde, Canberra ACT, 2014
2. A lot of your work revolves around travels around the Australian landscape, what is it about the landscape that captures your attention?
The world is made up from landscapes, to me landscape is everything. People merely scratch the surface of this planet, although some of these scratches become scars that never heal. Landscape often seems more present, especially in a place like Australia. All the traveling I have done in this island is all about getting a feel for this place to get some sense of belonging. I always been more of an explorer than a traveller. I have a firm belief that anything can be photographed given the right light and state of mind, I’m never looking for anything in particular in a landscape. Often you need to get lost a little bit or take a bunch of shitty photos to get in tune with where you are. In the past two years I’ve had the pleasure of having Jamie Hladky as my faithful partner in crime, together we’ve driven literally thousands of kilometres, fuelled by a similar urge to see stuff. It’s great to to share a love for things like palmtrees and country towns that are barely alive. It probably helps that we’re both from ‘the old’ country (Jamie is from the UK).
© Wouter Van de Voorde, Araluen NSW, 2014
3. Your photographs are generally devoid of the figure but the suggestion of the presence of humans is evident in the things that are left behind or the industry and growth that you have captured – is there a particular reason for the lack of a human figure in your photographs?
Every trace left behind by humans is human presence: a mound of dirt, burn out tracks on bitumen, quarries etc. To me these are all very strong reminders of human presence making such pictures of such locations almost portraits in my eyes. Actually there are quite a few humans in my photographs if you look closely (usually they are very small and lost in a larger context). I don’t shy away from photographing people per se I just prefer it when they add something of significance to a landscape. Locations off the beaten track are per definition devoid of wandering humans.
© Wouter Van de Voorde, Lake Burley Griffin ACT, 2014
4. How do you approach each shoot, is it intuitive or do you have a plan of where you would like to go? Do you have shots in mind?
Google earth has been my go to place for planning expeditions, interesting textures, colours of the dirt etc. There are a few obvious things I know are worth-while like sunset and sunrise light, fog, fire, smoke etc. Generally I work very intuitive. The only thing that is a constant is the ever-expanding physical area I cover to create my images. It’s a constantly evolving thing, my photography is very intertwined with my life. Now, as a new father, my life has become much more sedentary and I am forced to look on a much more micro scale at my surrounds which is quite challenging. Some weeds against a fence, a neighbours house against a sky coloured by a sunset. Really looking and seeing things is not something that just happens, you work on it every day, training the old eyes to stay sharp and take nothing for granted that projects on their retinas.
© Wouter Van de Voorde, Old Parliament House ACT, 2013
5. (hume) sunrise is showing as part of the Photobook Melbourne Festival in February at Colour Factory. The images have a quiet beauty about them, you have captured the true stillness of a moment a lot of us don’t get to see. Was this area of Canberra of particular relevance to you? What is the reasoning behind the project?
It started one misty morning as I dropped Celia to her early shift at the hospital and I had some time to kill before going to work myself. I went to this place between a few busy roads where horses and some cattle graze, just because there were some nice mist-banks. There was no particular relevance to this location at all before I went there time after time and constructed some sense of meaning. Very organically it became a small body of work, initially exclusively containing images from the same place. The reasoning behind the project is the absence of reason, it’s being in a landscape and embracing it with open arms, wide open eyes and losing yourself in it 100%. I walked across those paddocks with tears in my eyes, squinting into the emerging sunlight. These don’t even feel like my pictures, it’s like I got given a glimpse into something, like the earth broke open under my feet and emerging gasses clouded my thinking. The landscape as an oracle.
6. Do you have any recommendations of photo books that you are interested in at the moment?
I’m not a collector of photo books but I come across so many amazing publications online, magazines like Selektor or publishers like the belgian Ape (Art Paper Edition) do really exciting things. It’s a bit daunting, to say the least to do your own thing in the midst of all this photo book madness.
© Wouter Van de Voorde, Queanbeyan NSW, 2015
7. What other projects do you have on the horizon or any other plans for the future?
Besides my upcoming show I’m working on two books. One, which should hopefully materialise in the near future is a publication about the Wasteland by Jamie Hladky, William Broadhurst and myself. Another book is a monogram of my work from 2013-2014. I’ve also been picking up the paintbrush and doing some painting like back in the day, it’s quite a cathartic experience struggling with actual colour pigment in oil that gets your hand dirty. But it’s not more honest or real than taking photos it’s just the same but different. In the end the focus is always, getting out, seeing stuff, seeing the same stuff in a different light, and slowly building an archive of stuff that might make sense eventually. But I don’t have many plans besides staying alive for as long as I can while not fucking my time in this place up too much.