Cecil Bown moved to the Northern Rivers in the early 1970s. His series of work, Close to Home, includes images of Grafton, Lismore, Casino, Tregeagle and Lennox Head. His imagery increasingly stems from how the camera’s lens brings a particular perspective on the world, drawing out the aesthetic qualities in landscape: its geometries, textures, and beauty in the contrast between the natural and manmade.
Bown received his first camera, a Kodak Folding Camera, from an aunt approximately 60 years ago. The gift sparked an interest in photography which has continued ever since. Bown is drawn to analogue processes of photography, developing his images in his home dark room, working in the wet. His images use diffused light to soften the image and cause shadow areas to bleed into the highlighted areas. Bown became familiar with this technique through much experimentation in the darkroom, drawing inspiration from old photographic literature dating back to 1905.
