In the flash of a strobe light

One day when I was 20, I bought a book at a garage for sale for 50c called Nights In Birdland. I knew nothing about it and bought it purely because it was about jazz (Did I mention? I also play the saxophone). It turned out to be a treasure trove collection of photographs by a young woman called Carole Reiff, who in her 20’s, documented the American jazz scene of the 1950’s.

I fell in love with her moody, grainy and evocative images of jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and John Coltrane. She perfectly captured not only the musicians but the ambience of the jazz clubs and the life and culture associated with this period in musical history.

Several years later, I found myself with an incredible opportunity to document the underground rave and electronic music scene in Sydney in the late 1990’s. I immediately thought of Carole Reiff and aimed to create a similar set of images that captured not only the people, musicians and performers but the eclecticism, the vibrancy and the ambience that contributed to the creation of this subculture.

The images for Strobe were hand-held and shot with a Nikon SLR on cross-processed slide film with no flash, utilising the strobe lighting as the main light source to capture the colour and movement.

Strobe exhibited at

• Solo exhibition, @Newtown RSL, Enmore Rd, Enmore, 4th June to 29th July 2007
• Illuminart (projection art), Petersham Town Hall, 2003

Photographs taken at events by;

• Artcore collective
• Clan Analogue
• The Loveseat
• Club Kooky
• Frigid
• The Chocolate Factory
• Punos