The Dump.

Lately I have had my head in a lot of garbage. Scavenging is my thing, as in - my thesis topic.

Thankfully I stumbled onto this website in the course of my research, it was a welcome break from statistical data sets of solid waste breakdowns.

Joakim has been kind enough to let me use one of his photographs in my work. Check out the Scavengers series , and the rest! This series reminded me that there is always beauty, and if not beauty then at least something interesting to be found in the most unexpected of places. I am desperate to grab my camera and start a series on Port Moresby, especially at the moment in the midst of this noisy, unpredictable and electric election campaign. There is so much urban decay that I think it ends up creating a weird kind of beauty. People always make things so much more interesting.

What I find hard to resolve is how to get the photos I want, without being a white woman with an expensive camera shooting kids selling peanuts with no shoes. Denial seems like the only way forward!

How can you take beautiful intimate photos of certain human experiences you are not a part of? I wish I knew!

My inability to resolve this means that I have about 2000+ photos of my kids on the living room floor. Now there's something I am a part of!

With only six months to go, my challenge to myself is to create a series of photographs of Port Moresby, this razor wire town that will have been my home for three years. I just hope it goes better than last time - I got reprimanded by the bank security guards and had to delete all my photos in front of them, before then getting heckled by truckloads of amused young men as they drove on by. Needless to say, I did not get the sense that I was 'blending in' to my surrounds.

How to not be conspicuous? Losing the 6+ month pregnant belly is surely a step in the right direction! At least this time I will be able to slip through small spaces sideways. Perhaps I should have a realistic goal, and attempt to photograph Port Moresby as I know it, the people, the places. Go somewhere that I feel comfortable, and somewhere that is familiar.

I know!

A series called Checkout-Chicks: SVS Harbourside and Boroko Foodworld.

Actually, that would be pretty cool.