Guy Havell Gallery

The drought ravaged parched earth of the Queensland outback under the summer sun.

Recently featured in Medium Format Magazine, Elements Magazine and Petapixel, this project documented a visual anti-aesthetic that portrays an uncompromising, unromantic, unglorified view of the man-altered American desert landscape. It was an intentional contrarian photographic thought process and in some ways a rebellion against modern landscape photography and its incessant social media motivated, validation seeking pretty picture mentality. In the spirit of the New Topographics movement this project was a tribute to the ordinary with the underlying narratives of isolation, desolation and abandonment.

“The ordinary world needed to be portrayed with a substantial narrative as I wanted the viewer to look more deeply into the photograph. That meant contradicting the traditional landscape photography “rules” and techniques, and not being constrained creatively by photography’s current social media motivated, creativity killing popularity trap” - (Excerpt from my article in ELEMENTS MAGAZINE)

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© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

A non-cohesive largely experimental collection of single images I've photographed using the moonlight or sunlight to illuminate the scene during long exposures ranging from 10 seconds to 10 hours. Both film and digital cameras were utilised depending on my artistic intentions at the time, and, like all my work, every shot maintains a single exposure ethos in order to preserve the traditions of photography and not stray into the realm of multiple exposure, composite, or “stacked“ digital art.” As a personal preference, I’m not interested in producing computer generated imagery. All images © Guy Havell.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

This is a new series I started during the Covid pandemic while travelling within the restrictions of my home state of Queensland but it will eventually branch out into other Australian states as travel restrictions come to an end. Again, like much of my recent work, I was interested in photographing humble abandoned or disused structures in a simple way that highlights form and has an interaction with the locality. Almost a “Back Roads of Americana” mentality with an Australian subject matter. As with that series, this one adopts an anti-Instagram aesthetic and often employs a blatant disregard to the “rules” of photography. For me, good subject matter will always come before “good light”. I’m not interested in searching for beauty and again I’ve totally detached myself from trying to satisfy a mainstream audience and by continuing that contrarian approach I can continue to evolve as a photographer. Photography for me is not about gaining someone else approval, it’s purely self expression. I liked these humble landscapes so I photographed them in my own way, and if others take the time to look deeper into the photograph and interpret them in their own way, then that’s merely a bonus.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

Built infrastructure for many represents a blight on the land. The natural landscape altered and intruded upon in the name of progress, commercialism, and a better way of life. For me, as a photographer, the ugly, often mundane built environment provides a far more interesting and thought provoking narrative than most pretty picture natural landscapes can offer.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

A portfolio of Icelandic landscape images photographed during the autumn of 2013 and the winter seasons of 2015 and 2016.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

Documenting the tough as nails industrial desert town of Trona, California which lies in the Mojave Desert just west of Death Valley. Trona is still recovering from two massive earthquakes which devastated the region in July, 2019.

Night silence on the streets of the remote South Australian desert Opal mining of town of Coober Pedy.

Extreme summer days on the streets of the legendary South Australian Opal mining of town of Coober Pedy.

The “Art of Nature” Pilbara series of images is a personal interpretation of the ancient Western Australian Pilbara region landscape portrayed through the artistic use of intentional camera movement (ICM). These images are abstract renderings that represent the colour, light and movement within the landscape throughout the normal cycle of fire, flood and cyclonic seasonal events.

Extraordinary geological sandstone rock formations photographed on 6x17 format film in the Coyote Buttes North restricted access area. Paria Canyon / Vermillion Cliffs wilderness area, Arizona. (2010) All Images Copyright © Guy Havell

Finding abstract beauty in the human altered mining environment of the Fimiston open cut gold mine. Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

A series of continuous 1 hour long night exposures recording movement and light within an urban city environment.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

A series based around minimalism, simplicity, and expansive distant horizons photographed in the remote South Australian desert.

© COPYRIGHT 2020 | Guy Havell. All Rights Reserved. All images on this website are the property of Guy Havell. You must not download, print, share, reproduce or manipulate any of these images without the permission of Guy Havell.

Wide open spaces. Big Sky. Silence. Australian Outback.

I’m not interested in a “search for beauty.” Our environment isn’t always beautiful, and nor does it relentlessly need to be depicted as such in photography. For me, the most interesting photographs are found in unremarkable places where most tourists don’t go. As a photographer, I have an obligation to respect and acknowledge the ordinary world.

I’m looking for the Anti-Instagram aesthetic shots. The one’s generic Instagram will not “like” or bother to take the time understand. The Anti-Landscape. Something that doesn’t cry out for validation, carries a distinctly unlikeable and ugly visual aesthetic, and yet has a thought provoking narrative that only the minority are willing to take the time to interpret amongst the relentless mindless scrolling. I want to photograph places that are undamaged from Instagram overtourism thankfully because the tourists would never bother to go there. I want to observe and document an environment that is unremarkable and non “epic”, and that provokes and frustrates the viewer into asking the question. “Why the fuck did he photograph that”? Not all photographs need to be pretty, likeable and popular. The world is a diverse place and so is the landscape. It’s beautiful and ugly, likeable and hateable, and it’s about time some photographers started putting their self serving, validation seeking ego’s aside to photograph that diversity.