Captured all over the Mornington Peninsula and inspired by Martin Parr’s Remote Scottish Postboxes, this collection of Australia Post post-boxes utilises their aesthetic consistency amongst an ever-changing landscape to create a series of images that explores a variety of environments on the Mornington Peninsula. The use of a familiar object such as a post box that has uniform construction and colour scheme creates a series of images that viewers can immediately recognise and thus shifts the focus of the image to the background of the images. Like Remote Scottish Postboxes, the symbolism of the red post box evokes a sense of connection to the world and the presence of civilisation in each landscape.
The backgrounds of the images vary drastically from highway junctions to local post offices to boat ramps. The differences between these environments become more noticeable when contrasted with the symmetry of the post-boxes and show the varied locations through a lens of familiarity. Furthermore, the condition and upkeep of the post boxes become more prominently noticeable for similar reasons, as any change from the expected image viewers have of post boxes is accentuated when viewing the collection. The disparity in the upkeep of the post boxes is interesting as the deterioration from a pristine freshly painted post box to a crusty faded post box covered in graffiti, the impact of the weather accurately recorded on each post box’s face.
Editing the collection was relatively simple, adjusting exposure and light levels in photoshop as well as manipulating the images in such a way that the composition and framing of each image would be almost identical and create a sense of uniformity across the selected images. The main issue with the collection is that the photos were mostly overexposed as well as a few images that weren’t framed properly and had to be manipulated further to maintain the aesthetic continuity of the images. To improve on this, using a tripod would be most useful as it would allow for consistent placement of the camera in front of the subject and allow for a more uniform image to be created.