| The Timeless Romantic
World of Paul Freeman’s Photographic Art |
Paul Freeman
Outback: Currawong Creek (pp 200), hard cover with dust jacket, 54,95 |
If you are looking for a collection of stunningly beautiful photographs of
men that move you and take you on a story-telling journey, and not just a
bunch of pics of ‘hot’ guys in samey poses, Paul Freeman’s Outback: Currawong
Creek is the book for you. With 240 photographs of male nudes and portraits
on 200 luxuriously large format pages, this beautiful book continues Freeman’s
photographic story of hardworking and intimate male camaraderie in the Australian
rural heartland. For those who thought Freeman’s popular Bondi series
would be a hard act to follow, with its focus on fabulous Sydney men in a
stunning coastal cultural context.Outback captures our imaginations during a rollicking pictorial ‘boys own’ adventure in the parched farming landscape of Australia. |
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| Critics are personally affected and moved by these
photographs. “It’s brilliant! I’m quite moved by the images,” said Andrew
Creagh, editor of DNA Magazine. “I was born in the wheat belt of Western
Australia so a lot of those shearing sheds and shearers huts are familiar
to me; the red dust, the sheep dog, the old utes. The shoots are really well
integrated - some very clever and some hot guys. But mostly, it’s so evocative.
It’s great work!... [Paul’s] taken it to another level and I don’t think
anyone’s done anything like it!” |
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For Alasdair Forster, curator of the Australian Centre for Photography, “The
images in the Outback series reveal [Paul’s] understanding that the
erotic lives within the individual not the stereotype; that strength lies
in embracing one’s vulnerability as much as exercising one’s power; and that
the child abides within the man. Playful, candid and sexy, these men epitomise
a spirit of outback Australia that fuses larrikin fantasy with moments of
introspection that create a subtle counterpoint with the rugged beauty of
the land.” Scenes of mates cavorting naked in outback creeks lends a Bear
Pond flavour to an Outback: Currawong Creek filled with drovers,
farm-hands and cowboys, working and at play, a wonderful array of uniquely
beautiful men in a breathtakingly beautiful country, transformed again by
Freeman into a timeless romantic world of photographic art. |
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