The Australian landscape has beguiled photographers ever since the time it was possible to take a camera on location and record an image that could be fixed. With its dramatically vivid light and colours, it has particularly enticed photographers who weren’t born here, and quite a number of these have spent much of their lives getting to grips with its many challenging elements. Perhaps none more so than Mark Lang, now approaching 80, who arrived in Australia in February 1969 and eventually ended up spending many years living in his 4WD in the Top End so he could be fully immersed into every aspect of the Australian landscape. Mark was among the first to appreciate that it often couldn’t be constrained by any standard film frame, and began using a panoramic camera. Yet, Mark’s early forays into photography – while he was at art school in England – were into portraiture and he returned to it again after leaving behind advertising photography in Sydney and moving to northern NSW.
“The desire to make portraits really came from music because I was exposed to the blues at art college,” he explains. “The Rolling Stones were a local band and Eric Clapton was then playing in The Yardbirds which was another band from the area.
“Music became a big part of my college life, butwhich was on the theme of ‘night’ and I found myself going to clubs with my camera and photographing the people on stage. And the great thing about having a camera was that you had to be right up the front so you’re almost in the band. But then you got to know the bands and they’d maybe want some pictures or you might even be hired to shoot an album cover. I really enjoyed these experiences, but it really wasn’t something that I felt I wanted to do all the time. And I liked photographing these people, but I didn’t feel portraiture was by thing either.”
