#impromptu portrait

[jrobertwilliams]

Sydney. 

Sept 2020

Fuji X-T4 / Mamiya 28mm f/2.8

[ransomhughes]

Laura and Sasha, Southbank

Laura's a secretary by day and fixie fanatic after-hours. Sasha's her new love of just three months. 

[ransomhughes]

Chris and Matt, Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Southbank

I hunted pictures in my lunch break. It was 36 degrees and climbing. There was far too much light.

I saw an Indigenous kid with a broken leg and ‘don’t ask’ written all over it. I shot a pair of teenage skaters making their own breeze; a pair of skinny dykes in cute shorts, walking hand in hand; and two out-of-towners, slouching up the main drag in bikinis, like they’d been at a real beach. People seemed to be getting around in pairs today.

I saw a couple of guys from work and we argued the need for public warnings about the weather. It’s not an emergency, I said, it’s summer. Would you tell that to the Black Friday victims, one of them asked. No, but I don’t think we need to be told how to get by on a hot day in Brisbane.

“There’s really nothing to be nervous about,” said a voice from my right at the café counter. The young man wasn’t addressing me, but his friend at the other end of the counter. Despite standing between them, I was all but invisible.

They ordered and sat with their folders and phones and drank coffee and talked intensely. Then, on a gust, sheets of music peeled up and off their table and leapt across the space, some catching on table and chair legs, others skipping along the ground. The young man with nothing to be nervous about jumped up to chase them.  

There was clearly something going on but I interrupted and asked to take their picture. That's how rude I was today. I wanted to know the title of the score that had tried to get away, because I like to know the names of things. What happened next couldn't be called a conversation even though we all spoke.

I learned Matt and Chris both study classical singing at the Con. Chris graduates with a B.Music in three weeks, Matt has another year. If you're artists, there's always something to be nervous about, that's what I wanted to tell them. I said something stupid about milieus instead.

[ransomhughes]

Helene and Mathilde, Southbank

Both women came to Brisbane to pursue environmental studies degrees arranged through their French University's exchange program. Mathilde graduated last week and in just three days she returns to Paris to begin her working life.

Incredulous at my envying her, they complained Paris is good for a holiday but too expensive and busy to live in. When asked, I told them I preferred living in Melbourne to Brisbane (although I don't know if that's the truth any more). Helene suggested I winter in Brisbane and summer in Melbourne. 

Maybe wanting to be elsewhere is just part of the human condition.

[ransomhughes]

Janine, Fortitude Valley

The CCTV at the Valley five-ways would show me kneeling on the footpath taking pictures of an obliging young woman’s leg-bone tattoos when I first noticed Janine.

She seemed to be counting something. She kept poking her finger at her iPad-like tablet. The suitcase behind her said she probably wasn’t a cop so I asked her what she was counting. I’m not counting, she said, I’m just confused. She was trying to get maps to load so she could find her motel but it wouldn’t accept Worry Street at all. In the end it was faster for us to look at the street directory in my car up the street than get that browser to load. Of course it’s ‘Warry’ not ‘Worry’.

Janine hammed it up for my camera, and told me her house in Hamilton, Victoria, had been robbed last year while she was at sea. All her photos are gone, including a project 365, but this year she’s just happy to alive and well, she said. I gave her a ride and heard some half-stories about domestic violence and rape and the kind-hearted men who work in the merchant navy.

We sat outside her motel, old mates by now, and watched footage Janine shot of the march in Brunswick for Jill Meagher. I led the march for a while, she said, carrying the MUA banner. Then I slipped back into the crowd and there were all kinds of people as far down the road as you could see. Pointing to a tough old guy with a beard in the video: look at that bloke, he’s CFMEU. It wasn’t just the sisters.

We were on the same page. I would have been there if I could. But Janine wants more: we could do it every week and let them know we won’t accept it. We could gather on the streets, the whole community, until they realise we won’t give up our right to be safe from violence.

She said I could call her a seafarer, or a cook but she’s also fifty, the mother of four grown children, a photographer, a traveller, and a taker of chances.

Janine came to Brisbane for a seminar and then she’s dropping by Oakey on the way back home, because she’s never been to Oakey before. She works five weeks at sea for a Swiss company out of Perth, then has five weeks to herself, to enjoy being alive and well after a random act of violence that meant she nearly wasn’t.

Exchanging email details I got the most important tip of all: make sure you put the dot between my names, she laughed, because the other one’s a makeup artist to the stars in America and she gets very snarky when she gets my mail.

[ransomhughes]

Adrian and His Daughter, Southbank

On holiday from Sydney, but originally from Equador, this family has come to see the Portraits from the Prado exhibition.

Strolling along Southbank this evening, they noticed the public yoga class underway and Adrian's wife (whose name I don't know) joined in. Their little girl with serious eyes was intent on her electronic game. I wouldn't have risked disturbing her but her father spoke to her in Spanish and there she was beside him for my camera. 

[ransomhughes]

Fifteen, Windsor

Lorenzo and his group of friends were at the take-away, figuring out who could get away with buying the booze they wanted to take to a party at West End. I'd said hi when they passed me earlier.

Then, when he thought I was packing up my gear, Lorenzo shouted at me across the car-park to take his picture. He leapt on the metal railings and posed precariously until I said I'd come over.  

Am I gonna be famous, now? 

Aren't you already?

I suppose. 

He looks desperate for approval. He's a kid, definitely. With six cans of rum and coke in his system.

I asked about the girls with the group that night. Lorenzo said they're just friends, and that his girlfriend isn't going with them, but he'd tell her if anything happened. He slurped from the can of rum and coke hiding inside his jacket. Then he said, No I wouldn't.

We talked about drinking and he said he'd probably drink ten cans before he was really drunk. I was surprised how sober he seemed. I'm a good boy, he said. I don't know why he wanted me to think him a good boy. 

He's in Year 11 at a Catholic School in the city. The class clown. Always in trouble.

It's probably because you're smart, I said.

I'm really smart, said Lorenzo.