by Carla Caruso

A striking Adelaide Park Lands photo is the poster image of an upcoming Adelaide Festival show.

The image of fog swirling around gum trees in Carriageway Park / Tuthangga (Park 17), above, is the drawcard for Music for Other Worlds on March 15.

Marrying sound and photography, the show – at Adelaide Town Hall – is a collaboration between renowned local photographer Alex Frayne and virtuoso keyboardist Paul Grabowsky AO.

Two of Alex Frayne’s iconic images of Moreton Bay fig trees in Botanic Park.

With Alex’s ethereal photos projected at scale, Paul will, along with the audience, see the images for the first time.

As a master of improvisation, Paul will spontaneously compose an aural response to the visual masterpieces. (Paul currently has a collaborative album out with rock muso Paul Kelly.)

Alex Frayne.

Alex, 47, says the show was originally meant to be held during the inaugural Illuminate festival last year. But it was cancelled two days out due to coronavirus restrictions and inclement weather.

“We were lucky that it’s had a second chance [at the Adelaide Festival] … a bit of luck came our way after the bad luck that plagued 2021 Illuminate.”

While the series of images being shown onstage is top-secret, attendees can expect an array of South Australian landscapes, ranging from the Outback to the Park Lands.

“I’m really inspired by the Park Lands photographically. I always enter the [Adelaide] Park Lands Art Prize,” Alex says. (He was a finalist in the 2020 Art Prize.)

*Alex Frayne captured this image of Park Lands supporters campaigning to* ***save these trees from a Government axe*** *in Denise Norton Park / Pardipardinyilla (Park 2).*

“I live in North Adelaide, five minutes from the River [Torrens]. So, you know, I’m walking, photographing, seeing how things change, just as part of my artistic inspiration.

“It exists near where I live, and it’s dear to me. And, you know, we hope that the erasure of the Park Lands does not continue as it has been doing at a pace.”

*Alex took this portrait of 88-year-old former Olympian, Denise Norton, in the park that bears her name.*

Beyond the Park Lands Art Prize and the Festival show, Alex’s photos show up in all sorts of places.

He has a photo art book out with Wakefield Press, Landscapes of South Australia, which has just been put into a third print run. And he has another landscape book in the works, Distance and Desire, due out around April.

Hotels like the Vibe Hotel Adelaide and The Playford have also snapped up his prints to use in their rooms. “I know a couple of images [The Playford] bought were actually in the Park Lands.

“They were keen to only pick up images, which were relevant to the hotel itself. The hotel is just near the Torrens, so it made sense that they went for images that are around the corner.”

He’s also had photos of identities, AFLW player Erin Phillips and Holocaust survivor Andrew Steiner, acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

At the other end of the spectrum, Alex has been working on a series on homelessness, The Overseers of Streets, for the Anti-Poverty Network SA for the past five years.

His images are licensed, free of charge, to the group for their fundraising purposes. “Homelessness is still plaguing the CBD … I always tell [the Network] that an image is worth a million graphs.”

*One of Alex’s landscape images was used as a print by local fashion label C/MEO Collective. Photo: C/MEO Collective.*

Elswehere, local fashion label C/MEO Collective licensed one of his landscape images for an outfit.

The shot was taken out of the window of a moving car in the remote SA town of Yunta.⁠ “I never would imagine that that’s what an image would end up being on, but I was pretty stoked by that,” Alex says.

Though he initially studied film at Flinders University, it’s photography that has kept Alex’s focus over the past 20 years.

“Some people use a brush, some people use a pen, some people use ceramics. I just find that photography is the best fit for me.”