First and foremost, this place we call Fremantle is, was, and always will be Walyalup, unceded Whadjuk Noongar country. Every street, shop and home in this town has a story, has a life, is someone’s memory and someone’s future. I set out this year to photograph a series of four images capturing each of Walyalup/Fremantle’s ‘boroughs’ and the landmarks and personality of each. The scenes are framed in relation to the heart of the city, the port, on the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River), and the cranes that keep watch over it all. After moving from the southwest almost 20 years ago, my Perth life has always taken place one way or another in the streets and suburbs of Freo. At first, working in retail around town before setting up office space on Market Street, eventually opening Ooh Coffee in North Fremantle and enjoying the community that grew there. Last year, my wife and I bought a home in East Fremantle. The house was built by an Italian family in the 1950s and our daughter was born in the living room there last year. Each of these chapters has made this neighbourhood more significant to me. I started to watch the port and the sky a little more closely than I ever had, learning the patterns of the cranes, the way the sun moved across the river, the traffic of cars and people. I started to understand the conditions and angles that would express this place as it feels to me. I wanted to create something that felt more like a portrait than a bird’s eye view. Each image is captured from the air, but in a way that creates intimacy between the suburb and the viewer. These are the streets we know and love. This is Fremantle, this is home.
