The Diary of Jon Frank

I’m gonna be be out of radio contact for a couple of weeks, heading west to stare into the sun. Everybody knows that sends you crazy… Frank Out. 

I spent a few days up on the Gold Coast late last year with my friend Ted with the intention of shooting a specific set of photographs so revolutionary I can’t even speak their name. Of course, that all fell in a heap, so instead we took my large, clumsy old medium-format film camera out to some rocks near his house and messed about with his big flash and drank a few beers and wasted some rolls of Tri-X. The pictures weren’t quite what I had in mind but it was enough to just shoot the breeze with a like-minded soul and laugh at ourselves and the moon. 

Here at ‘The Diary’ we care about the big issues. Towards the end of last year, my partner Marieka and I traveled to Malaysia for a few days on behalf of the International Detention Coalition. During our time there we conducted a number of video interviews with children seeking refuge from persecution and torture in their home countries. The realities of these children’s lives is difficult to comprehend, particularly when they are criminalised within Malaysia simply for their attempts to seek refuge. All of the five children we spoke to had very similar experiences within the detention centres in Malaysia – they were given not enough food and water, were exposed to unsanitary living conditions and consequently became ill, and witnessed emotional and physical abuse (in some cases, of their own parents). Unfortunately, due to a lack of constructive policy in Malaysia many children and adults are released after a month or two, only to be picked up by the police again and put straight back in detention. This cycle is often perpetuated for years and these children grow up in political limbo where they are not even afforded the right to attend school.  If this is an issue that matters to you get involved and sign the petition to end child detention (here) .

Each month in SW magazine I photograph a surfer profile called Frankology. Here are a few outtakes from this months issue featuring the Peter Pan of pro-surfing Mr. Taj Burrow.  Western Australia dazzles. It’s bush, the antithesis of formality. Its structure mesmeric. Fire has been through here a month or two ago, a scheduled burn off that got out of control. From all reports it was lit on a blowy, scorching day. Homes were lost, no lives taken. Whoever gave the go ahead to strike the match on such a day has to live with his decision. Charred reminders line the coast road for miles, and will for a couple of trips round the sun. But they will do as all do who start again. A decade ago I drove north in an orange 1982 Ford station-wagon loaded with surfboards and cardboard boxes filled with 35mm slides. My insides were all smashed apart so I smoked Stuyvesant cigarettes to help bind them back together again. Green buds find light from inside black branches. The wind from the southwest brings rain. Time to heal.

If you happen to be in Sydney on April 1st you may be interested in attending a concert at The Standard featuring Satu Vänskä (below, without feathers) and Jim Moginie from Midnight Oil alongside classical musicians from ACO Underground. The show will start at 7:45PM with a half hour mash-up of video projections set to recorded audio that I have cobbled together from previous concert works The Glide, The Crowd & Nothing (example above). This twisted little appetiser should provide the audience with an even greater appreciation of the live music being performed at 8:30PM which will feature pieces by Radiohead, Nick Drake, Vivaldi & Paganini. Tickets are $25 which seems like a good deal to me when you consider that the latest Hollywood crock of shit will set you back $16 at the local multiplex. 

The Four Seasons Sydney have been gracious enough to hang a large (1.2m) framed seascape in 108 of their premier suites. We have designed a brochure (below) to be placed in each room so that guests can be pointed to jonfrank.org to view other works from the series or make a purchase. The prints will be sold as part of a strictly limited edition of 25 per photograph, each one will be signed, numbered and embossed. I tell you this not to try and procure a sale but because it is an important step forward for me as an independent artist. Call it my attempt to survive the choppy waters of the current editorial and commercial marketplace. I would love nothing more than to be able to continue exploring my own work, I feel there remains so much to be done.