By Ness Jennings
LOCAL cinematographer and photographer Jon Frank is turning his lens to cataloguing modern-day Australia and wants keen-eyed Geelong residents to help.
Jon is seeking suggestions from well-travelled Geelongites about people, places and events he should catch while gathering material for his next book.
“It’s an ambitious project but by no means is it authoritative or all-encompassing,” he explained.
“It’s more a hint of what we might mean as a nation and where we’re at now. We tend to hang onto a lot of ideas from last century and it’ll be interesting to see if they’re still relevant.”
Jon wants Geelong’s journeymen and women to alert him to people, places or events they may have stumbled upon in their travels.
“I love traveling to new places and sitting and watching the locals. I try to react to what I see and allow the camera to capture that moment of urban exploration.
“The natural environment influences me, crowds of people interest me – specifically, how they interact and what they do.
“I’ve always travelled but I have a family now and I’ve based myself in Torquay since the late 1990s. I’m finding the call of the community – the Australian community – quite strong at this point in my career, so I’ve decided to catalogue it with the help of locals Australia-wide.
“Creating a book capturing the culture of modern Australia and Australians is a long-term goal – it’ll take me more than a year to go around and visit the places people want me to see.
“I like the idea of having a body of work people have helped me create – a body of work that will log a period of time in our collective Australian history and, hopefully, portray it in all of its positive and negative reality.
“I want to create a body of work that’s long-lasting and I want people to have an impact on what I shoot.
“What is your society? What have you seen?
“What is the point in time in Australia that you remember is special or unique to you?
“If you have that special moment in time, that amazing place in Australia that lives in your memory, I want to hear about it. I want to shoot it. I want to see what you see.
“It might be ugly, it may be beautiful – I want to see it all.”
Jon asked anyone who wanted to contribute to email him at info@jonfrank.org or follow his interactive blog, Australia – The Book, at jonfrank.org/Australians.
