This article was downloaded by: [McMaster University]On: 19 December 2014, At: 11:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Continuum: Journal of Media& Cultural StudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20

Miss Cottesloe Beach 1988Kevin BallantinePublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Kevin Ballantine (2001) Miss Cottesloe Beach 1988,Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 15:3, 268-268

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310120086759

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Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2001

Miss Cottesloe Beach 1988

KEVIN BALLANTINE, Edith Cowan University

The photograph on the cover of this edition of Continuum pictures a young woman whocaught my eye at Cottesloe Beach during the summer of 1988. She was amongst a crowdof other spectators watching a beach-girl beauty contest, and I remember that I enjoyedthe way her body tentatively mirrored the poses of the beach girl contestants, as if infantasy she too was on parade. Figuring desire, though, wasn’t my focus. As Australiabegan its 200th birthday celebrations I was on the beach entertaining dystopian visions.

The portrait of the young woman was one of many beach pictures I made that summerwith a fusty, old, medium-format, twin lens Rollei� ex with a � ash attached. I was aftercandid rather than self-aware pictures and the Rollei’s full-size image on the groundglass allowed the camera to be held discreetly at the waist where subjects could beframed by glancing down rather than looking directly ahead. However, the Rollei and the� ash proved too bulky and intrusive for discretion but the gear was necessary for thelook I was after, so I persisted. The Rollei’s leaf shutter aperture allowed for exposuresthat rendered distant skies dark and leaden while still synchronizing with the � ash thatstarkly lit bodies near at hand. The technique made the familiar, unfamiliar, and themundane, other worldly, a style chosen for a proposed exhibition I was working on thencalled ‘Portraits from the Oz Zone’.

I had liked the title. It sounded funky and in 1988 the word Oz had currency as a slangterm for Australia and there were the cryptic connotations I liked that were relevant thento anxieties about health and environmental concerns associated with a hole in the ozonelayer that was exposing the continent to potentially harmful radiation. The use of� ashlight for the beach pictures was a device to give graphic expression to the notionof a foreboding sun, herald of an impending apocalypse. The � ash from a nuclear devicewould similarly trigger apocalyptic visions illuminating the beach in a manner that, too,would make the familiar, unfamiliar, and the mundane, other worldly. The Americanwarships and submarines that anchored provokingly to the south of Cottesloe Beach atFremantle and Garden Island could also do that back in 1988. Yet as a preoccupation,‘Portraits from the Oz Zone’ enjoyed only a short half-life. Just one summer. Whereassome of the images were working, most weren’t. Picturing apocalypse wasn’t easy.

Nowadays in Perth, Western Australia, we’ve learned to live with the idea of a holein the ozone and the visits of the dollar-spending American sailors. And now, as I lookat the photograph of the young woman on the beach watching the beach-girl beautycontest, stripped by time of its dystopian associations, the image merely accords to thestyle and redundancy of a fashion photograph. Nevertheless, there is some residue of the1988 context that for me still has resonance and some pictorial elements that I still enjoy.Like her day dreaming, blissful, ecstatic gaze and her body stretching lazily as ifawakening from a deep sleep. Like Dorothy after her trip to Oz. A journey triggered bya change in the weather.

Correspondence: Kevin Ballantine. E-mail: k.ballantine@ecu.edu.auKevin Ballantine is lecturer in Photomedia, School of Communications and Multimedia, Edith CowanUniversity.

ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online/01/030268-01 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1030431012008675 9

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