In 2012 I started this blog as the basis for a photobook project in response to photographing industrial wastescapes in Melbourne's west with Stuart Murdoch. The first post was about photographic anxiety; the third embraced the idea of conceptual documentary, the fifth post introduced interpretation, the sixth post introduces the idea of perspectivism, whilst the seventh signalled a rejection of the positivist underpinnings of documentary photography.
The notes in those posts opened up a pathway for the project and the various posts can be interpreted as brief notes. It -- the photobook -- remains uncompleted. It had been put on the back burner.
The initial concern or subject matter was edgelands, or more broadly drosscapes, which can be interpreted as an urbanized region that is the waste product of defunct economic and industrial processes of late capitalism. Drosscapes are the inevitable darkside of human made industrial landscapes. Many are highly toxic.
Alan Berger's concept of drosscape implies that dross, or waste, may be "scaped", or resurfaced, and reprogrammed for adaptive reuse. Berger is specifically concerned with American urban landscape, but it is what is happening in and around Sunshine, Melbourne, or more broadly the post-industrialized sites of Melbourne's western suburbs.