b. 1983
Currently living in Sydney, Australia.
I have been enthralled by the play of light for over ten years, training myself in recording candid moments of ambient light first on 35mm film, and digitally since 2006. I am inspired by the sense of purpose that can be wrought by picture-taking, as well as art, cinema, theory and practice that poetizes the everyday in various ways. I completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Cultural Studies at Sydney University in 2009, writing a thesis that critiqued academic responses to self-published media, in relation to the politics of representation. My work has appeared at Triple J, YourRestaurants, Mecca Cosmetica, and in Drum Media, The Brag, Cardboard Box, Honi Soit and Hermes.
Please be in touch for collaborations or purchases:
gblackie at gmail dot com.
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News
The TRESemme Insider blog has a major crush on beauty writer Anni Hall’s hair. Their interview with Anni is illustrated with a picture of mine. She is described as having a ‘boundless digital passport’ - So true!
Mecca Cosmetica is featuring another of my portraits of Anni Hall, who, aside from being fabulous is their ‘Undercover Blogger’. Anni was a guest editor at their beauty blog in September. Check out Anni’s blog.
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Group Exhibitions
2010 – No People, At the Vanishing Point Contemporary Art Gallery, Newtown NSW. (Part of the inaugural Head On Photo Festival)
2010 – Contrast: A Working Title, Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown NSW.
2009 – Glass Eye, Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown NSW.
2008 – Rust & Skin, Callan Park, Rozelle, NSW.
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Print Publications
Selected work, Hermes 2010: Prospect/Retrospect.
Branches Without Leaves #1 and #2: The Trace - Self-published colour photography zines. Catalogued at the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
Six Magnetic Poems - Self-published black & white photocopied zine.
Author Neil Gaiman photographed for Rima Aouf’s interview, ‘Portrait of the Journalist as a Screaming Fangirl’, Honi Soit.
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Review of my photographs exhibited in Glass Eye:
A few nights ago I went to a photo exhibition in Sydney. The images were all familiar. Lots of that wonderful urban decay and murkiness that seems so popular these days. I’d realised that as interesting it is to discover these kind of places, that kind of environment as a photograph is becoming overworked. I realised now that me taking those kind of pictures was because of either becoming lazy or that I’d lost part of a unique creative direction. I’d often want to have pictures of crappy alleys and peeling paint to go home with when I couldn’t find one of those “big” pictures. It was better than nothing.
Back to the exhibition. The familiarity startled me and made me uneasy. How many people were doing what I was doing… do I even need to exist as a guy-who-takes-photos when the same thing is being done by so many others?
Then I saw a section of wall with photos by another artist that I found arresting. A collage of overlapping and disjointed colour 6x4’s; hung almost haphazardly, frameless… a pile on the wall. The photos themselves were not “big” photos. They were snapshots, although technically great, resonating stylistically of a Vampire Weekend cover. The artist had included detail shots of her everyday life and possessions and it formed a wonderful body of work. It was inspiring and beautiful and I learned something about spontaneity and heart from it.
