TITLE: The Pursuit of Happenstance

To recognise the potential of a random instance and, despite its quickness, create a photograph that communicates with subtlety and meaning. This is my ambition.

AUTHOR: Brian Condron (Australia)

In my teenage years I encountered a travelling, black and white exhibition from the National Film Board of Canada. I’ve never forgotten the impression the candid photographs, in particular, made on me.

I trained as a commercial photographer in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. I found, however, accommodating my personal vision to the commercial format was a source of frustration. I felt compelled to take my camera onto the street and photograph the nuances of everyday life.

To recognise the potential of a random instance and, despite its quickness, create a photograph that communicates with subtlety and meaning. This is my ambition.

Even during the years I spent as a photojournalist, in Canada and in Australia, where I now live, I made time for this work. Part document and part private perspective, these photographs explore the humour and the pathos I find in random occurrences.

I am drawn to juxtapositions and subtle gestures. By putting my frame around these moments I can imply new meaning, rendering tragedy as comedy or the mundane as absurd.