For the past seven years Heather Petty has returned to the place where she was born in order to photograph its derelict and abandoned homes.
On South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula she captures the beauty and memories in the decaying rubble and strewn rubbish – crystal glasses, comic books and clothing spilling out of suitcases.
The Adelaide-based photographer was inspired by the work of Canadian photographer David McMillan, who documented the growth and decay of Chernobyl over 20 years after the destruction of the nuclear plant and abandonment of the city.
Petty’s photographs featuring the rooms of abandoned houses and a roadhouse near Wudinna have formed her first solo exhibition called Long Exposure Memory.
“It’s six buildings all in various stages of decay, five on farms and one is the local roadhouse, the locals would know it as Greenspot but it was actually the Neptune Roadhouse when it first started out,” Petty said.
Finding beauty in decay
Petty was fascinated with the Chernobyl project and saw beauty in what had been destroyed.
“I’ve kind of always liked grungy kind of photos, a little bit out of the ordinary.
“Pretty landscapes are not my preferred photography.
“Scratching around in old buildings, it’s really, really interesting because the light coming through windows or through the roof where the iron has come off casts really interesting geometric shapes or some nice light, depending on the time of the day that I was there.
“It was like watching light be cast over a heap of rubbish and decay and [thinking], ‘How do I make that look beautiful?'”
Petty said the photographs would evoke memories.
“I imagined the people there,” she said.
“One family in particular I could remember Fay standing at the kitchen, at the derelict kitchen, preparing the food for the kids, waiting for the husband to come in from the farm and kick off his boots before he walked inside and they all sat down at the table to have dinner.
“For me it was kind of like recalling a memory, it’s probably not what happened — what I imagined [had] happened, so it was an interesting way to represent decay.”
How farming has changed
Petty said rural areas had changed a lot since the homes were built in the 1950s so the photographs documented the decline of rural areas with larger farms, larger machinery and fewer workers.
“It says something about the resilience of the community — it’s been through a lot,” she said.
“The Millennium drought really changed the way that farmers actually thought about how they approached farming in general.
“It certainly tells a lot about how the community has modified with the changing environment.
“It’s become more of a tourist destination and that’s how they focus the telecentre [community hub] on and they’ve got into some very good coffee shops.”
Petty said nature eventually would take over the buildings she photographed if they were left to deteriorate.
“[The photographs] also say a lot about how violent nature can be and it’s very hard to fight it,” Petty said.
“If you leave nature to its own devices it will do something that essentially will destroy buildings that are man-made.”
The right light
Petty said doing the work over a long period of time meant she knew what time of the day — and in what season — to photograph locations.
“I knew which room to photograph because I knew the light in the west would cast a certain light over that floor in a certain way and that would cast light over certain kinds of rubbish that were on the floor.
“I know those buildings like the back of my hand.”
She hopes her photographs spark memories for the community, particularly the colourful photos from the roadhouse.
Petty’s exhibition opens on Friday, October 27 at the Wudinna Telecentre.
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