The previous post entitled  Nostalgic Pleasures #3 gives the  background to  my  experiment in a minor key  of using 35mm expired Fuji Velvia 50 film  and a 1960's Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR camera.  The  picture  below was made whilst I was wandering  in the area around   Bunjils Cave  in the Black Range Scenic Reserve, adjacent to  the Grampians (Gariwerd) in Victoria  in the  late afternoon in spring.  

The photography that day was chance encounters in a rugged, harsh  and messy  landscape, which  had a history of being burnt from bushfires and with a probable future of becoming warmer and drier:  increasing dryness with more  hotter days  (greater than 35°C) whilst the spells of warmer temperatures will last longer. The climate models indicate that the temperatures will increase by  1.9°C----2.5°C by around mid-century. 

This was an experimental photography  for several reasons: it was the first time that  I'd been in the area around  Bunjils Cave;   the photography was an improvisation as I had little knowledge of how the film would respond  to these conditions; and  I could not preconceptualize  the appearance of the  image.  All that I knew from earlier experiments was that  that expired Velvia 50 had a magnetic cast,  and  I presumed that this  would make what was familiar  strange in some way I could not visualise..  

My mood that day was one of  mourning  as I walked around: mourning for the landscape that had been lost because of  the surrounding colonial  settler agriculture that had  so isolated the Grampians.  Though we are at some distance  from this settler history -- a distance created by the Grampians National Park --- it is still difficult to sever the link to that lost landscape, especially in the light of the forthcoming  harsher future. 

That makes the loss traumatic. Making a photo of the landscape in the present  doesn't ease the sense of loss: on the contrary it reinforces the loss whilst re-interpreting it.  Yet the mood of mourning is not just a subjective emotion --mood  is  a fundamental attunement to the world. Mood is an element through which we relate to the world and is that by which the world is disclosed to and by us. So past, present and future conjoin.