Violet Johnstone, Echo

Transcript

Through a series of 13 black and white photographs printed on mount board, Violet intends her project (‘Echo’) to provide a bridge to the past and celebrate the timeless bond between generations and the enduring spirit of Australian Football, imagining a primary audience of men in their 40s-60s who have a shared history of playing junior football in Melbourne. She describes each photo as being a chapter in a story, featuring players from the first under 15s boys’ team of the club Prahan from the South Metro Junior Football League, (SMJFL).

Each photograph was taken in colour on a Canon R10 camera with a range of lenses and subsequently edited and manipulated to create powerful black and white images.

The set of photographs are presented on canon photosatin paper printed using the Epson Stylus pro-7880. Each photo is sized 290mm x 420mm, including a 6mm white border.

They include:

- A close-up of a curly-haired player in a changing room (capturing his head and hunched shoulders). Violet manipulated the image to bring into contrast the player’s fair skin and freckles.

– A group of four mud-caked players sitting side by side on a bench in the changing room. One grits his teeth as he reaches to pull a shoe off his foot. To his left, his face obscured by the head of the first subject, a player swigs from a bottle branded with the Nike ‘tick’ logo. The two other players sit forward, their elbows resting on their thighs.

- A player’s grinning face, in profile. Beside him sits a sober-faced team mate, whose eyes are downcast. His team singlet is rumpled.

- An exterior shot capturing a huddle of teammates from the waist up. Most have their backs to the camera, revealing the numbers on their team singlets (67, 37). One player, head and shoulders above the others, faces towards the camera, his gaze off to one side, his teeth bared.

- Another changing room shot of two players sitting side by side on a bench. The one closest to the camera fixes his gaze ahead of him (to the viewer’s left) to something, or someone, out of shot. The player beside him seems to eyeball the camera, his mouth covered by his cupped hands.

- An exterior shot of three players: the one nearest to the camera mid-stride, bent forward with the tapered oval football in his hands. Almost entirely obscured beside and behind him a player lays his arm across the first player’s shoulders. The third player faces his team mate, his mouth open as if in speech. Bisecting the photo in the background is a white picket fence.

- An exterior shot of a player wearing a mouthguard, his hands in the pockets of his shorts as he frowns to his right. His hair is slicked over his forehead. Mud spatters his muscular legs. Behind him, a player in a different team’s singlet runs with his arms bent at his waist.

- An exterior shot of a player running away from the camera, his left hand pointing out as though in victory. Violet’s manipulation of the image highlights the falling rain that appears snow like when rendered in black and white.

- An exterior shot taken from behind of 9 boys running in their uniforms. The white picket fence bisects the photo from behind.

- An interior shot of players in the changing room, their backs to the camera, their numbers stark in white against the blue (manipulated to dark grey) of their singlets. Taking up the far left fifth of the photo is a man wearing a black hoodie and (in the original version) a luminous yellow bib branded with the word ‘Runner’.

- An exterior shot of a handful of the boys running as though from left to right across the photo: the first just encroaching on the far left of the frame, the fifth with his nose already out of shot. One player’s hair is bouffant with the movement of air. Another’s flexed muscles cast shadows across his bicep.

Violet’s folio reveals her inspirations: photos on and off the pitch that capture celebrations and team interactions. She researched the work and process of Michael Willson (chief photographer of the AFL) and Victorian-based photographer, Morgan Hancock. It also includes scores of annotated photographs, highlighting issues and features of particular compositions, angles and choice of equipment and settings.