Another interpretation of dead leaves in the local Waitpinga bushlandmade whilst on an autumn afternoon poodlewalk. This time it is the leaves that have fallen to the ground:
The leaves become part of the ground cover that we walk on, and often than not they are not noticed. As the leaves slowly decay during the winter months they lose their colour. It was the colour that initially attracted me.
I have spent quite some time walking in the local Waitpinga bushland this autumn. I walked with Maya on the morning walk and with Maleko on the afternoon walk. Whilst being preoccupied with dipping my toes into making walking art I noticed the dead leaves hanging from the branches of the eucalypts as well as the bark.
I'd ignored them up to now as I had been primarily focused on the bark with a 35mm film camera. The leaves were concealed -- merged into the background. In the last couple of weeks of walking I started to look at the dead leaves as I walked past them. Their speckled brownness stood out from the background world of green. I started to photograph them closeup.
What emerged was the simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand. The seeing involved in the encounter with the present-at-hand gives precedence to the entity and it does so precisely because it detaches itself from the background context. The emergence of the dead leaves into presence can be understood as an event of the un-concealment of the dead leaves out of concealment. The photography discloses this coming into presence.
The local bushland is becoming off limits in the afternoon due to the snakes coming out of their winter hibernation with the warm spring weather. It is still okay to walk in the bushland in the early morning before sunrise when it is cold or wet from the heavy dew.
I notice that this Rhizomes blog was neglected during the autumn/winter period this year -- there is a gap between March and August. There is even greater neglect with The Littoral Zone blog. I'm sure this neglect was the result of me struggling to put the walking and the photography together as a process-based photographic project.
The photo below was made in early September 2023 whilst I was on a poodlewalk in the late afternoon with Maleko:
Going back through the archives Rhizomes and seeing what I had photographed in the local bush during that March-August period I can see that an immersive style of walking was emerging: one that was reactive to what was occurring around me, rather than going into the bushland to photograph a particular object in certain lighting conditions that had been pre-visualised.
The macro photo below was made on a recent, early morning poodlewalk with Kayla along Depledge Road in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. It was sometime during the 2020 Xmas/New Year period.
I have generally been walking along the back country road in the morning or afternoon to avoid the strong, gusty coastal winds; or for some shade from the late afternoon summer sun. The rhizomes photography has been rather limited this summer.
This picture of roadside vegetation was made on a recent early morning poodlewalk with Kayla along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga during the recent stormy conditions. Recent as in late September.
We chose to walk along this road as the adjacent bushland provided us with some shelter from the strong, gale force south westerly winds battering the coast. There was no traffic along the road, and so we had it to ourselves; apart from the usual rabbits, kangaroos and foxes criss crossing Depledge road.