BRUCE USHER; COAST TREE STREET
A lifetime of photography – from B&W surfing action in the 1960s to a deeply personal contemplation of the Australian bush and a sharp eye for the interplays on a busy city street – is documented in a visually enthralling and engaging new book by Sydney-b
Regular readers of Australian Camera will be familiar with Bruce Usher’s contributions to this magazine, whether they be his precisely-balanced portraits for the A Few Of My Favourite Things features – as much about the art of communication as photography – or his insightful interviews of photographers young and old, and from all fields of the profession.
After essentially two long careers in photography – one as a corporate and advertising photographer, and the second as a versatile freelancer – Bruce has collected all his philosophies, ideas, influences and, of course, favourite images into a book called Coast Tree Street.
The title categorises – as much as possible – the three main subject areas that have stimulated Bruce’s photography from the earliest days to the present when he has more time to pursue the pictures he wants to make. At first, it might be hard to see how the three are linked, but they represent Bruce’s journey.
“Well, it’s a bit like life, isn’t it?” he states. “A lot of us live in cities, but we like to escape to the coast and we get our oxygen from the trees. It’s a bit of a circle. I mean, if the photos were arranged in a different way, it could have just been a book on Australia.”
However, it isn’t and, this being Bruce Usher, there’s a lot more responsible for how he distilled a lifetime behind the camera into three small words – ’coast’, ‘tree’ and ‘street’. What is immediately noticeable, though, is a consistent vision. All the images are beautifully seen in the camera – an Usher attribute that has always made his photography something rather special – and executed with a clarity of mind that seems to almost instinctively sense a visual balance through framing and composition. While often uncomplicated in execution, Bruce’s photographs can be far more complex in content than initially meets the eye. Yet he sees it all in a flash, while the rest of us have to spend some time in careful study and analysis to realise the full implications.
Looking And Seeing
“The weird thing is,” Bruce says. “I’ve gone back in my life to try and work out how I first started seeing graphically. What was the transition from what was quite ‘straight’ seeing to more graphic seeing? And, to be honest, I can’t quite work it out. It is, to some extent, the difference between looking and seeing, but for me I think this has come about because I’ll simply keep working at something until I get what I want. So I’ll keep practicing, practicing and practicing; and learning from every image I take… looking at the composition, looking at the lighting, looking at the backgrounds. Then, all of a sudden, everything coalesced.
“It’s really like commercial jobs – the more you shoot, the better
It’s important photographers know how to balance freedom of expression with the requirement to respect personal space.
you’ll get. And, as a result of that, you’re also seeing more. I started to see things that I hadn’t seen before. And also it’s about building confidence, particularly with street photography and shooting people, without being obvious.”
Bruce talks about seeing things he hadn’t seen before, but he also sees a lot that most other people would miss – the shapes created by shadows, the ironic elements of a background or the poignancy of a precise moment. It’s as if he’s much more intimately engaged with his surroundings than anybody else who might be there at the same time.
“I think I always have been. I think it goes back to growing up with surfing photography in my early teens. You’re looking at a horizon – that’s your horizontal line – and you’re looking at a wave – that’s your diagonal line – and so you’re already starting to see geometrically. But then I also think that there always has to be some element of mystery in a photograph, so I’m always looking for things that can’t be easily explained by the viewer.”
Setting The Stage
As much as Bruce’s photography is about seeing and timing, it’s also very much about composition or, more accurately, his particular interpretation of how elements are arranged within the frame.“I think I’ve always had a reasonable eye for balance – at least since my mid20s – but then you evolve and you start to do things differently, you start to break it down. You might have the subject in the bottom right-hand corner and other stuff around it. But a lot of this is now instinctive for me; I can sense when everything is working, but often it’s just one or two frames and then that moment has gone.”
Bruce explains that he’ll sometimes see a ‘stage’ – a setting with pictorial potential because of the light or location, but missing an element, usually a person or people, that would turn into a dynamic image. In these situations, he’s prepared to wait for the magic to happen. “You’ve got to find that stage and then think about who are the impromptu actors who are going to perform within it. If you wait long enough – and the light stays with you – these pictures generally happen.”
Catalysts
Bruce sees a logical link between the three areas of coast, tree and street photography and, indeed, the coinciding of events and experiences have been the catalysts in his exploration of each… despite the three being quite different.
“As a result of showing the surfing film, A Winter’s Tale, in Newcastle on 1 May, 1974, I happened to be there for a May Day rally. I had a Mamiya twinlens reflex camera and one roll of film – so just 12 frames – but
I also think that there always has to be some element of mystery in a photograph, so
I’m always looking for things that can’t be easily explained by the viewer.
that was what got me started in street photography. Then I bought a second-hand Leicaflex – with two or three lenses – which was better suited to street photography and I was really motivated by the potential.
“But then, for one reason or another, I really didn’t do any more until I started living closer to the centre of Sydney and it was much easier to get into the city. That convenience was what rekindled the love of street photography… I could just wander around at any time with a camera and then I started to see things, but it took between 18 to 24 months for it to all to come together. For instance, I didn’t start to notice the backgrounds for a long time, I was just trying to shoot people. But then I’d start to stake out a background and wait to see who came through it.”
Tree Change
“The trees thing came out of a phone call from Ross Renwick of Billy Blue fame, and he wanted to do a book with me about the Angophora tree. Sadly, Ross passed away before the book could happen, but now I had this body of work, so I did a photo book… and I also developed this love of trees, but I actually think that I’d always had this, I just hadn’t realised it.
“These pictures are not just about trees, they’re about my intimate relationship with them, and there are locations that I’ve been visiting regularly for up to 10 years or so. But there are also locations that I’ve never been able to find again, no matter how hard I’ve looked.”
There’s another element that’s very much a part of the book’s Tree section and that’s fire. As Bruce was finalising the image selection and still heading into the bush, Australia’s east coast was being devastated by some of the worst bushfires in history.
“Actually, some of the first shots I did of fire – the impact of fire – were back in 2006 when I was first talking to Ross Renwick. There was a big fire happening then and I immediately started to wonder what the Angophoras would look like afterwards. I had no idea, so I drove up to the location and the fire was still active, but I managed to get in and, basically, the Angophoras didn’t burn. Then, a few years after that, I was down around Mount Hotham, and all the mountain ashes had been burnt out a couple years before, but the landscape was just so surreal.
“I’ve deliberately not used any sensational photos of the fires – they’re really not very photogenic – and instead I concentrated on what’s happened to the landscape in the immediate aftermath – the colours, the shapes, the patterns.
“The book is really a mixture of all sorts of approaches, especially with street photography because I didn’t want to embarrass people and I didn’t want to be seen as a nuisance. So I developed techniques to avoid distracting people. In essence, everything in the book is about seeing, but also about seeing beyond just the subject, to their relationship with the surroundings and even with me. So some of the photos are three-dimensional – there’s
The more you shoot, the better you’ll get. And, as a result of that, you’re also seeing more.
a foreground, the middle and the background and things are happening all the way through. A lot of my photography now is very personal… very solitary. But I love the calming solitude of sitting alone in the bush. That stillness as a tree emerges or morphs from within the green, black and brown mosaic. The dance to find the right angle and slowly be transported to another time and place.”
Coast Tree Street will be available from mid-March priced at $90 hard cover (or as a cased and numbered limited editionof 100 copies for $200). To order a copy go to www.bruceusher.com.au.