STEPHANIE RADOK explores Mark Kimber’s mythic landscapes - where fiction is the larger fact and discovers how a 'photograph' of  landscape becomes imbued with a mystical presence.

Sometimes the sky can be mythic. It is happening a lot lately in Adelaide where one day the weather is almost tropical with sublime clouds in whites and greys and strange moody pinks twisting and flowing across the sky, and the next day it is cold, a real winter’s day, and the morning is full of mist that clears later to towers of scalloped white clouds with grey underbellies.

Mark Kimber has spent most of his life under the large Adelaide sky. His photography has frequently focused on the suburban, the industrial, the borders or the 'edgelands' of Adelaide with cloudless blue-glowing or night-darkened skies familiar as both backdrops and essential contributors to the sense of unreality achieved in his images. Kimber's work draws on his admiration of the work of Edward Hopper and Jeffrey Smart and their creation of precise urban spaces that speak of human loneliness.

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Image: Mark Kimber, Vapour Trail, 2004, giclee print, 80 x 200cm.