AMANDA AUSTIN
To travel is to live – a phrase touted by countless creatives who hold dear their spontaneous wanderings and thank their restlessness as key to finding inspiration in their work and life. Sydney based photographer Amanda Austin not only uses her wide travel experiences as a source of constant inspiration for her wistful and romantic images, but also pin points her nomadic adventures as the starting point in her photographic career. “It took until I was in my early 20’s travelling Europe with over a year of travel and being constantly disappointed by the results of my out of date camera. I pined for my first SLR but I had been travelling for quite a while so I was perpetually poor and always just scraping by from one place to the next. While in Paris I made fast friends with an Australian girl who was studying at a prestigious art school. She was my dream friend – she had three SLR’s and a darkroom in her bathroom. She gave me a camera and loads of free film and I set myself loose on the streets of Paris, trying to teach myself from her notes on my new camera – a Canon AE1 with a 50mm lens. I took this camera on a journey, mostly through India and South East Asia, for a good year and totally fell in love. I would go on long journeys just to photograph and try to capture moments and people that I was being so affected by… there was something about those images, maybe it was even the added effect of out of date chemicals and photographic paper, that kind of changed my perception about photography – It’s not just for documenting but to evoke mood and feeling.”
Urged forward by her boyfriend-at-the-time’s mother – an artist who believed there was something special in her images – Amanda carefully curated a whimsical folio of the landscape and portrait photographs taken during her extensive travels, winning her a scholarship to the Photographic Imaging College in Melbourne.
“People’s first response to this album of images was full of praise and only through that did I first consider that I could use this tool seriously to express myself, my ideas and my reactions to the world. I travelled a lot looking for a direction to take my life. I had bravely jumped into so many roles in my short life and tried so many things; I was nearly waiting for something to choose me. And photography I think in the end did choose me.”
Responsible for some of the most quietly emotive fashion shoots you’re likely to see, Amanda is probably most well known for the dreamy covers and features she shoots for cult magazines Frankie and Yen. “I’m not much of a planner, I’m more of a motivated wanderer. I like to see the future as empty pages of a book not yet written. I had no idea that I would become a fashion photographer or a professional photographer at all really. I didn’t know if or how it was possible at the beginning – it’s quite a dark path, like most creative professions. Fashion has this fast paced short attention span that I love. Even after deep thought, it’s spontaneous, bold and then moves on. Fashion gives the best tools for story telling. Every garment, hat, shoe, hair style, make up direction, background, model selection and lighting concept all co notates to something and gives you pure freedom to tell your story.”
The constant pressures and full schedule of a professional photographer might prove a soul crushing exercise for some, but Amanda prioritises activities that keep her creativity alive and believes that her nomadic tendencies have helped her to see the beauty in moments of everyday life. “Having an overview of the world in some way gives you a point of view and colours your imagination with so many different references to life. For me, whether it was teaching English in Prague, cooking on a yacht or picking produce with tribal women, all of these experiences have affect in some way on my opinion of the world as much as my upbringing, where I went to school, what I saw and heard throughout my life defines in every day who I am, the way I see things and the way I create. Through loosing myself to many experiences that long distance travelling affords, I came back with a natural direction in life, a deep feeling of security of who I was and I felt deeper about everything. I feel that photography has given me a gentle platform to have something to say or offer”.
Published in PITCH Zine, July 2012