I’ve been visiting the Fleurieu coast all my life, and started making photos here about thirty years ago.
Over time, what had started as a stumbling succession of snapshots began to reveal itself as a kind of survey. Perhaps it was even becoming a body of work.
So my intent has changed and there is now a purpose behind these images – a desire to create something.
What has not changed over time is my love of the horizon and sky, but there is more to it than that.
Perhaps it’s colour. Perhaps it’s a love of how sometimes the sea is brighter than the sky and sometimes darker. Perhaps it’s grey clouds when the sea beneath glows green, or the sky turning orange-grey as a full moon sets.
There’s a desire to record this, of course, and also a desire to share. But what is it that I really want to share? Not just a picture - not an image - not even an experience. Is it possible to share a way of seeing?
Perhaps a photo can say, “Once or twice, at this time of year in the late afternoon, the sky will meet the sea and the horizon will vanish."
Or even, “Sometimes, when a storm has moved to the east, in the evening the sea will be very dark and the horizon will become a tiny line of fire.”
I’ve looked at my own photographs in many different ways. At first as a way of remembering, so I could be reminded of a moment. And then as a way of recording; as a note that I could refer to later.
After striving to make work that I find satisfying I have been oddly taken aback when people have said, “That is beautiful,” because beauty has never been a goal. I don’t think I understand what beauty is, but these days I am happy if that is the response. Perhaps my imperfect reflections of beauty manage to strike a chord with the viewer.
So what is the intent - the goal - of this work? This is the hardest thing to know, but the best I can say is my work seeks a solution to a puzzle. This puzzle may have no solution, but that does not mean the search for it can stop.
David Hume 2020
Credits:
Photos: David Hume. These photographs were shot on film, often with multiple exposures made in camera with overlapping frames.