I wandered past a nursing home not far from where I live recently, and noticed a side gate ajar. Peering in, I realised the home was abandoned.
Inspired by an idea from the photography course I’m currently doing, I went back with a camera and tripod. It was quite an unnerving experience (as well as illegal of course). I wasn’t sure what I might find around each corner, behind each closed door. Clearly I was not the first intruder. Here are a few of the photographs.
Copyright Mike Hopkins 2016
(Assembled using Lightroom custom templates)
I’m doing a photography course at the Centre for Creative Photography in Adelaide, the second module I’ve studied there. This week, the subject was formalism, and the assignment for the week is to take some formalist photographs. I particularly liked some of the “typological” photographs which the lecturer presented. “Typology is the study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner.”
I set out from my house to search for ideas and the first thing encountered out of my front gate is a large Stobie pole. “Stobies” are a particularly ugly South Australian invention. They are power line pole made of two steel joists held apart by a slab of concrete and were were ‘invented’ by Adelaide Electric Supply Company engineer James Cyril Stobie (1895–1953). In my view, they are a blight on the urban landscape. However, they make a surprisingly interesting subject for typology photographs.
Here is my first cut:
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