Monday, 10 February 2025

Seeing Sydney a little differently - Redleaf Boulevardier

I sometimes walk along a street I know well and try to imagine myself walking down that street as if I had never walked down it before, as if seeing it for the very first time. It's an interesting exercise in observation and one that I try to apply every now and again. So I don't take my environment for granted. After all, as Heraclitus stated back in 500 BCE “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Things are always changing, in the outside world and our inner world too.


I've put together an exhibition of images of the place that I been swimming for the past 10 years. It is a protected harbour pool in Double Bay, Sydney. A pool on the harbour 80 meters by 30 with two pontoons and a D shaped boardwalk out over the water, above the iron bars that serve to protect swimmers from the sharks that also swim in the harbour. Although this is a place that on the surface at least, I know what it looks like. The pictures I've created are a mediation on the beauty of Redleaf, and a visual expression of the idea above, about how things change while remaining the same. The pictures are available as archival, fine art prints - that will remain the same - as a limited edition.  Sizes and pricing details on my website with all 11 images Click Here. 

Original fine art print of Silhouette swimmers - Redleaf Boulevardier, Impressions of Redleaf Sydney an exhibition of photographs by Kent Johnson
Silhouette swimmers

These are photographs of the actual exhibition prints.  Click image to view uncropped & larger.
Original fine art print of Bougainvillea against the sky - Redleaf Boulevardier, Impressions of Redleaf Sydney an exhibition of photographs by Kent Johnson
Bougainvillea against the sky

Original fine art print of Swimming in the afterglow - Redleaf Boulevardier, Impressions of Redleaf Sydney an exhibition of photographs by Kent Johnson
Swimming in the afterglow

Original fine art print of Pontoon after dark (still life) - Redleaf Boulevardier, Impressions of Redleaf
Pontoon after dark (still life)

Original fine art print of The dive - Redleaf Boulevardier, Impressions of Redleaf Sydney an exhibition of photographs by Kent Johnson
The dive

Redleaf Boulevardier : Notes Redleaf is beautiful. It's certainly not just me thinking this. Nearly every time I come here to go swimming and start walking down the steps to the pool. There is someone who has stopped walking up or down those steps. Arriving or leaving, that has stopped to take a picture of the view. Most people just use their phone. And it's not at all unusual for someone passing by to comment to the photographer, on just how beautiful it is, here. Unfortunately my phone-camera was not doing justice to the beauty of the scene. In my phones' snaps of the many scenes I saw - the colours were wrong, the qualities of the landscape and many details were lost or digitally altered - so my phone pictures merely became a note-to-self, come back and make some proper pictures! I half relented. I started taking my old camera in an old bag with some old lenses, sometimes a tripod too. I swam. Then I sat on one of the benches and dried off. Becoming a Boulevardier (is there anywhere else in Australia where this term could apply more than at the beach? I think not). Simply enjoying the panorama of people, water and sunlight, then I would take the camera out of the bag. I might take a walk along the boards over the water, or stand on the sand trying to catch a diver leaping from the pontoon. Set up the tripod as the sun slipped below the horizon. The warm afterglow of the evening making the harbour a serene watery fairy tale dotted with colourful lights, with boats and figures silhouetted against the fading light. The beauty intensified, I waited, I clicked my shutter, curiously that old equipment leant something to the rendering of the experience and the pictures. Redleaf Boulevardier is the place and the feeling, and my hope is that when viewing these pictures you experience that beauty too.

Redleaf Boulevardier - Impressions of Redleaf an exhibition of photographs by Kent Johnson.
Coral Coffee (Fable Cafe), 128 Darlinghurst Road Darlinghurst. From the 18th of January - Extended from the 8th to the 18th of February 2025

To order prints contact Kent on 61 (0) 433 796 863 - kent@artcommunication.com.au

View all 11 pictures from Redleaf Boulevardier online here - https://www.kentjohnsonphotography.com.au/Exhibitions/Redleaf.htm


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