‘I like to go fishing at the beach even though my father says we can never eat the fish. “Polluted” he says and shouts “get out of the water”. But I like the water, the water is nice, warm and brown. I like watching the big ships too. We do not see the sun much and the colours have gone says my mother. I don’t know where they have gone. My father tells me stories of a blue sky, blue water and many large fish. Bigger than me he says but that sounds crazy. He says he went swimming every day in the ocean when he was my age. I wonder what that was like. I sometimes dream I swim in the ocean. I swim with big whales that I have seen in movies. They are friendly and do not scare me. You can see them underwater because the water is not brown in my dreams. In my dreams it is blue like the blue I see in old movies. I like to dream except when they’re scary dreams then I don’t like it. I wish the ocean could be like my dreams.‘
A possible future scenario? A world with dead oceans and no colours? With the rate we are consuming resources and polluting our planet I doubt this is science fiction.
I felt this image lent itself very well to this story. Captured at Kwinana south of Perth, a large heavy industrial area full of very interesting photography opportunities. True North Mark and I drove down here last Sunday under an epic sky and captured some industrial altered landscapes. We met this boy and his father fishing and it was a golden opportunity to juxtapose the boy with the ships and the sky (I sat down to get to face level of the boy, only it annoys me I am a little too low and his head is in the pier behind him). This image has been worked quite a bit to support my story. The water and beach here is actually truly gorgeous, making it even more surreal to have huge gas plants etc. right on the beach. Much more to come as I have many altered landscapes from this area to be processed. Kwinana is both incredibly ugly and incredibly fascinating.
I like this image and feel it tells a strong story, what do you feel when you see it?
