I'd like to tell you about Jack. Not everything, as Jack was a very private man, just those things he was happiest to share when he was with us. Which was mostly his photos.
Jack's Place
was Australia. All of it.
A lot of Jack's
Place was the bits that most people don't often get to, and for many not always
totally soft and beautiful at first glance. But every frame that caught Jack's
eye, surely held something that's worth a second look. But you'll need to
decide that for yourself.
Not a lot of
this collection will have a specific location, because Jack knew every place
and knew them well, which is probably why he never wrote on individual photos
or slides, just a cryptic title on the box to remind himself of the year and
the geography - HE always knew the where of it and the what of it.
Jack also knew
that other thing too, the one that's about spirit and emotion and 'art', but
like most of us, he was never able to say those words, because he just wasn't
built that way, and besides, they don't really exist anyway. Not out in the
audible world.
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Jack was born
in the bush in 1911, and was in the manner of an uncle to me, swung in and out
of my life every so often and left a lasting impression. And we got on pretty
well, well enough that when he died on the other side of the country back in
1990, he entrusted me with the record of his life - that is, his diaries, his
cine films, his photos.
Jack wasn't big
on words, tended to stick to facts, only spoke when he had something that
needed saying. And his diaries are the same, two or three brief sentences, each
day of his life since he was 16, concise and factual, no flourishes, no
feelings, no philosophising. He kept all that stuff for his photos.
Jack bought his
first camera about the same time as he started his diaries, when the emerging
man began to see the world in his own way, and was overwhelmed with a need to
record it. Taught himself how to develop his own photos, right out there on the
farm, and not always with the best possible results.
But a camera
became his primary means of self expression. Always had one. Black and white
for a lot of years, then switched to colour slides later, dabbled with 8mm cine
film along the way.
Other than
photography, Jack had two other loves - to explore Aus, and to make things.
He was the
quintessential old-fashioned Engineer "who could make something for two
bob that any damn fool could make for a quid" (an old adage, but not one
told to me by Jack, as he was never a person to suggest anything about himself
one way or the other).
All three of
his houses, from just after the war (he served in New Guinea) until he died, he
built himself, the first in the suburbs, the next back in the small town where
he was born, and the last as far west as he could manage. (I think the next
town west from his was Maputo in Mozambique! Geez he liked his solitude.) And
each house was like himself - tidy, efficient, practical, comfortable, very few
frills - and mostly fitted out using stuff other people chucked away. Built-in
cupboards, furniture, workbenches, a great lathe, even made a coffee table from
part of the nose cone of a wayward Blue Streak missile that he found "well
down range" out in the desert in the 70s. It was a classic.
He also made
his first motorbike, in 1929 when he was 17, right there on the farm, in his
own words "a bitsa based on a 1920 J.A.P." Which he used to race in
local scratch matches. Then a few years later his first car, a
"flivver" that was part T Model Ford and part ten other things. Jack
hated horses ("You never knew what a damn plough-horse was going to do
next!") but he surely loved wheels. Told me once that it was one of the
best days of his young life when his father finally bought their steel-wheeled
kero-powered Hart Parr tractor.
Jack left me
his collection of about 5,000 slides, from the early '60s till the week he
died, but I never quite knew what to do with them. He used to cart selective
reels of them around with him on his travels, show them to the folks he stopped
off to say g'day to in passing, those many long-term friends he made, mostly in
corners of Aus I have trouble finding on the map. I was amazed at the distances
some of these friends travelled to his funeral.
And he actually
kept a map too, a thing about the size of a decent knee rug, and on it he'd
plot in coloured markers each foray he did into the wilderness. It's an
absolute maze of lines! - there's not much of this ancient continent's surface
that he missed. And he loved every square foot of it. And photographed most of
it! Sometimes from several angles.
The other day I
was thinking about Jack's story, and realised that it should only be told
through his photos, and that he would be quietly chuffed to have them "out
there".
Jack rarely had a person in his shots, but
I always thought he had an eye for landscape, for (what I choose to see as)
that "God" factor. When you get a glimpse - into. That place. Nothing
spectacular mind you, just something that Jack saw and wanted to hold onto.
Show to others what he'd found. Something like that.
Anyway, that's
why I'm putting up "Jack's Place", a selection to begin with, but I'll add to it as I go along.
And if you see something you like? - hey, take a copy, Jack'd be only too
pleased.
Oh, and one
other thing..... Jack was my Dad.
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