Category Cameras

• Interior, Cocktail Lounge, Menzies Hotel

  ONE OF MY FAVOURITE Australian photographers is Wolfgang Sievers, who fled Nazi Germany to make a commercial career photographing Australian factories, mines, refineries, office buildings, and construction sites. He was a modernist, who liked to remove all the people from his photographs and capture the places as the gigantic machines for abstract production that they, in a sense, were. If like me you like extremely geometric pictures of other people’s workplaces, you’ll like Sievers.

  Sometimes though there’s a photograph that goes against the grain of the rest of the otherwise spare and formal collection, in a glorious way, and even though formally posed, just captures a moment. The interior of the Cocktail Lounge, Menzies Hotel, 509 Bourke Street Melbourne is just such a picture.

  Waiter, two whiskey sours and a pink gin! Thanks mate!

  

  Posted 28 February 2020 · Author Liam Hogan

• Camera Repair

  Brief reflection demonstrates that the vast majority of human labour, from laundry and trash removal to janitorial work and food preparation, is of this type: upkeep…

  WE LIVE IN A society that elevates innovation and the creation of new commodities far beyond their maintenance or any thought of their service life. This is true of big objects like mobile phones, which have a specific obsolescence built into their design, and cannot be replaced once their glued-in batteries cease to retain a charge, as it is for big objects like the blocks of apartments made by our construction industry, for which a successful project is one that sells enough dwellings in a boom to cover the borrowed money to pay the builders, and lasts intact just long enough to pass the home warranty period.

  Posted 18 July 2019 · Author Liam Hogan

• Parcel

  ‘YOUR PARCEL HAS BEEN delivered and is waiting’ reads the text message. The parcel locker system is one of the best recent innovations of the public sector; instead of having internet-ordered things delivered (if you’re lucky) to your house, or more usually, delivered to a post office open 9am–5pm, you get a six-digit number to your phone to open a secure box in the wall. It’s like a PO box but without the costs or size restrictions.

  

  This package is from Japan, has camera parts in it, and is—I hope—going to be the difference between my having a working camera and an expensive shiny paperweight. The model of camera has been out of production since 1972, and the company has long since shut, so it’s a wonderful discovery to find that there are still people in Japan making and selling things like shutter ribbon, and replacement coverings. Hooray for enthusiasts.

  Posted 10 July 2019 · Author Liam Hogan