My wife and I were seen as the lucky ones when we settled in Tasmania. We called it the great escape.
Imagine this: fewer than six hundred thousand people living on a land of sixty eight thousand square kilometers, with endless sunshine, salty seabreeze, sheep and cattle grazing on soft hills, and a slow, quiet life behind every door.
Now imagine waking up in a tiny studio in a city of over ten million, standing in a packed subway train for more than an hour each way, then leaning against ten other people in an elevator, pressed shoulder to shoulder.
When our friends visited a few years ago, they said this must be what heaven feels like.
Yes, and perhaps no.
The more we settled in, the more we began to feel a different kind of exhaustion. We love the people and the place, but nothing seems to stir within us anymore. Life here is so remote and peaceful that something feels absent. Something thrilling, something exciting, something that makes us jealous, something that urges us to change… none of it is here. We are not sure if it is the isolation, or simply that we entered our midlife crisis a little too early. We are slowly decaying.
It is like that old lady we know.
She was born in Hungary during the Soviet era and grew up as a devoted communist. In her youth, she met Joseph Stalin in person. As a reward for winning a multinational sports competition, he might have shaken her hand or even kissed her cheek. Years later, she became an activist, standing against the Soviet invasion of her country. She fled, first to the United Kingdom, then to New Zealand, and finally to Tasmania. Each move was shaped by a different reason: a foster family, a marriage, a series of puzzles unfolding one by one.
What a life it was. A life filled with belief, honor, resistance, and escape.
And yet, she told me that after all of that, she has lived in Tasmania for thirty years, and nothing has really changed, except the flowers in her garden. Her first day here, she said, still feels like yesterday.
And then there is this photo.
A meaningless photo, taken with a Nikon F3T made in 1985, the year I was born, using a 50mm prime and expired negative film that had sat untouched for over a decade. It was shot during one of our once-a-month road trips to the Great Lake in central Tasmania. It is so meaningless that it does not try to say anything grand, nor to inspire anyone. But it was the only excitement I felt during that trip.
I am not trying to make a statement like, look, these rocks must have been here for millions of years, and now my beautiful, naked wife, curled beside the dead tree roots, becomes a vivid addition to this eternal and peaceful landscape.
No. Not like that.
It reminds me of a recent exhibition here in Tasmania by a Chinese artist. In a television interview, she explained how she had deliberately painted Tasmania’s native flowers alongside artificial Chinese objects, attempting to create a meaningful fusion. It was intentional, symbolic, and carefully presented. But that is exactly the opposite of what I want.
I want to believe there’s something waiting beyond the lake and the mountains. Something unknown. Something worth chasing.
But I know what’s over there. Another winding road through silent forests. A few sharp turns, then the same ranches stretching out under the same sky. A vineyard here and there. The same small shops with the same old women behind the counters, unchanged, as if time forgot them.
It’s all familiar, all already seen, just like the old rocks on this side of the lake.
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Miguel Mendez on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Peter grey on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Gary Smith on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
I just turned 71, I don't need to be chasing anything these days.
I live in the USA, I do hope there is something beyond 2028 for us.
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Dave Powell on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Ibraar Hussain on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
I live in rural east Anglia in England. Nothing going on here but we all have God’s green Earth to enjoy and experience and it’s all around us.
Comment posted: 17/07/2025
Geoff Chaplin on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
If it's an either/or choice then maybe it's time to move back to the city.
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
David Hume on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Tasmania is indeed a calm and beautiful place, but it is a place that also received 75,000 transported convicts with the establishment of the English Penal colonies between 1803 and 1853. Only 200 years ago it was in the midst of this. And with colonisation came dire consequences for the First Nations Inhabitants. I say this for no political reason, but only because on my recent trip to Tasmania I could feel this brutality steeped in the atmosphere along with the beauty.
As clearly you are a thoughtful person, if you have not already done so I am sure that you will be able to consider your thoughts in the context of the many artistic and philosophical schools of though that are similar to yours.
Absurdist, Dada, Nihilist, for example, are good places to start.
What strikes me most strongly though is the paradox that in making something with the intention of giving it no meaning, you are, ipso facto, putting meaning into what it is you make. This pondering of the meaningless is ironically full of meaning! (You could read Samuel Beckett, Camus and Sartre if you've not already)
Given that there is a close connection to nature (of both the natural and the built environments) in your work, you might also like to look into what Tasmania's First Nations people had to say about the land living in harmony with it, and see if that resonates with you, as it does with many non-indigenous people.
Anyway, I feel there are many exciting and worthwhile avenues of meaning to explore in your work should you choose to. The fact that you are sharing your thoughts here publicly indicates to me that this path might be one you find worthwhile.
Cheers.
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
David Pauley on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Comment posted: 18/07/2025
Jeffery Luhn on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 19/07/2025
I have felt the way you did when you wrote that provacative piece. Hopefully, it's temporary malaise.
Once, many years ago, I was totally stressed out with the pressure from my photography business and a lackluster marriage. Really bad. I heard about a treatment where you float in a salt water bath in a dark enclosure. No light, no sound, no feeling. They give you a tube to drink sugar water and a button to press when you want to get out. I lasted 28 hours.
Not long afterwards, I sold my business and got a divorce.
Comment posted: 19/07/2025
Comment posted: 19/07/2025
Hannah Gimblett on Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story
Comment posted: 19/07/2025
Comment posted: 19/07/2025