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John Arthur Nichol

  • Tall is the new black.

  • A young woman on the bus attends to her phone. She has long, brown, silky hair, a burgundy dress and pointy nails the colour of coagulating blood. Her screen slowly unfurls four things that ‘men shouldn’t be allowed to have’:

    lowercase letters
    blankets
    silverware
    running water

    With this undigested the phone moves on, demanding to know whether Tana Mongeau and Jeff Wittek are dating, but there’s just no easy answer to that: I don’t know who they are.

  • The all-stops bus. A grandmother frocked in green formality, hands in lap and handbag beneath them, feet together on the floor, glowers sidelong through slitty, disapproving eyes at a child who bounces, squeaks and shrills on the maternal lap.

    Many stops later it’s the child who looks sullen, holding one aggrieved hand to her drooping forehead and leaning on her grandmother for support.

  • Scowling beneath her black helmet on Spit Road, shaking her head, a lump of grumpy old woman tilts her motor scooter round the tail of a dithering people-mover.

  • At Manly Wharf, the distant ends of jetties remain the lawless preserve of little boys, and sometimes bigger boys and girls, who hurl themselves into the shark-infested harbour. Today it’s the little boys in their long black gym pants that look like board shorts, but they’re mostly preoccupied with a huge decking plank that just won’t make the leap. They’ve pushed it off the edge as far as they can but the weight of it has the final section wedged beneath the railing. They stand on it, see-sawing up and down but all to no avail; the ancient slab hangs in space, angled to the water and fated never to enter.

  • A man stomps across a shopfront awning in Mosman, peering into the sun as a yellow-clad body leans down from the roof.

  • Gimcrack

    Gimcrack's not a word we use in Australia, but these window arches are pretty shoddy.

    In a white-painted brick wall above the awning of a shop, white plastic overlays transform each of three windows into the appearance of four arched panes.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 11

  • Ritual

    My Ritual Journey South on the B1 Bus

    A view from near the back of the top deck of a double-decker bus, looking forward at the backs of five passengers’ heads on the left and two on the right. A screen at the front says ‘This stop: Manly Vale’. Outside are shop signs, apartments and traffic lights.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 10

  • A white haired woman is playing solitaire on her phone, tapping tiny cards with her middle finger. Her nails are long without being talons, manicured but unpainted. She wears a crisp blouse of blue and white stripes, and a smooth black vest that may be part of a suit. She glances up at the Stop signal button, her lashes heavy with mascara, and is ready long before we reach her destination on the outskirts of Dee Why.

  • In the hottest part of the day a man is weeding his balcony boxes. They run right along the front of his penthouse. His right forearm is covered by a cast or bandage, and his head by a wide-brimmed hat that needs reseating now and then. He wears a dark grey t-shirt. With his left hand he uproots big weed clumps and drops them at his side, and I imagine someone unseen, in the cool depths of the penthouse, who will not be pleased with the mess. Perhaps that’s the point.

  • Three women and a dog approach my bus stop. Suddenly they all pause, and dog woman goes down into a half-squat, rubbing a palm over her thighs and yapping. They resume their walk, and though the dog is very friendly when they reach me, the women are distant, absent really, and preoccupied with dog woman’s tale. ‘My whole leg went numb,’ she says.

  • Together

    A middle-aged couple seen from behind, standing side by side, heads raised and angled in the same direction to read the ferry departure times. A crowd of disembarking passengers walks towards them.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 9

  • Two high school girls share a seat on the bus, and a phone screen. One giggles through her nose, in short bursts linked by smiling pauses. Her final thought is pretty much a whinny.

  • In a yard only partly shielded from the traffic, a woman stands on one foot, contemplating her vines.

  • A girl spots something on the other side of Pittwater Road that makes her smile, and moves towards it. She wears dark clothes, sunglasses and boots. With a glance at the oncoming traffic she bolts out into the road as two school-uniformed girls appear. They hug in the middle lane, laughing, then scatter to safety in opposite directions.

  • Walk

    When you walk, not all of you is moving.

    People walk from left to right across a sunlit plaza, looking blurred because the long exposure has captured their movement. One foot of each walking person is clear, not blurred, because that foot was not moving when the shutter opened. Everything else around the walkers is clear and in focus, like figures standing in the background, and an arched entrance saying Information.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 8

  • Whole

    This used to be a whole building, but now it's just a facade.

    A two-storey building on the far side of a main road. The ground floor is completely hidden behind white hoardings. The upper storey, of rendered brick or stone painted white, has a tall section in the middle with three tall windows, and a narrow, shorter section on either side. The side sections have one tall window each. The front facade of the building is all that remains. The rest has been demolished, and the windows all show a view of trees and sky, and parts of a huge crane that towers above.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 7

  • Mixed Messages

    A tall, narrow panel of graffiti, posters and stickers on a shop corner between two windows. Dark red conduit, overwritten in silver with different tags, runs down from a beige meter box at the top almost to the bottom, where two flexible grey conduits emerge, coiling further down then across to the right where they feed into a vertical, sheet metal half-cylinder bolted to brickwork. Above this cylinder is a narrow strip of shop window with books on a shelf and reflections. The meter box at the top is layered with posters, the topmost showing a green alien face with spiral eyes and skeletal hand, and ‘Breizers Debut Album’ like a stamped postmark. Near the ground are three stickers. One shows a woman’s face with crystals emerging from her eye and flowers from her skull. One shows a 1920s vintage animal cartoon character in top-hat, braces, red shorts and yellow shoes; the character holds a match and a lit bomb and stands on a plinth saying ‘Be Gay - Do Crime’. The last sticker has stenciled letters obscured by black paint dripping from graffiti higher up.

  • Natural Conglomerate, Collaroy Beach

    Looking down at a hand in close-up, where a small piece of rock perches on the tips of two fingers. The stone appears to be composed of compressed or hardened sand, containing chips of white quartz crystal that are visible on the top and side. One chip is almost square, and another morphs to a milky-white translucency. Grains of sand and reddish, pinkish crystal cling to the edges. Blurred in the background are two sandalled feet, and wet beach sand covered in footprints.

  • Meanwhile, back on the 199 …

    A German cockroach scurries across the back of a seat.

    A man comes aboard at Warringah Mall with black hair tattooed on the top of his head: hard-edged, hardcore, high gloss.

    Two Year Seven boys, seizing a seat together, immediately set about being noisy.

    A middle-aged man glares reproachfully at a woman taking half his space.

    A high school boy says “This is outrageous,” in a tone just mildly conversational.

    A man fails to link his phone to the Opal reader in the doorway. He lowers his bag to the floor and takes off his sunglasses, frowning at the screen. A youth squeezes past with a grin but scores a fail on his Opal card; he shrugs and continues down the bus.

  • In the late afternoon a big fluffy cloud appears from nowhere, hanging like a space ship in my window.

  • A small girl dressed completely in pink crosses the road with her mother, but frees her hand as they reach the footpath. She shades her eyes and points at right-angles to the direction her mother wants to go. A discussion ensues. The girl peers up, pulling sunglasses from her forehead and replacing them many times, and quickly. Finally she changes hands, and points in the opposite direction to her first choice.

    They could be there a while.

  • On Sydney’s hottest day in two years, the 199 from Manly has no air-conditioning. The windows are sealed. The emergency exit hatch that must never be opened is open.

    A red-faced mother with sunburn mimes ‘Oh it’s hot!’ to the contents of a pram, fanning her face, puffing her lips out and smiling. She has blonde hair topped with sunglasses, and pale blue eyes.

    Another woman leans conversationally over the barrier to the cross-seats, and the mother replies with an American accent:

    ‘Ya. Hottest day of the year. I’m just …’ She pauses and drags her palms down sweaty cheeks … ‘We don’t have far to go.’ She’s out of conversation, and lifts accusing eyes as new boarders squeeze in - schoolboys with white shirts, black bags and no sense of personal space, or of anything much.

    As the bus grinds on she makes constant maintenance probes and water bottle offerings inside the pram. Her face grows redder, her eyes more tired. No smiles for the baby now, just a silent, red and sweaty frown of concern. She yawns suddenly. Uncertain whether to roll her eyes or close them, she does both.

    Many stops later she escapes, backing the pram down onto a sun-blasted footpath, and an older woman follows with a shake of the head. They stand together, close associates of some kind but not friendly. Or perhaps the 199 has leached them of the will to try.

  • Engineering

    Long-Term Shade Engineering at Manly Beach

    A small Norfolk Island Pine Tree stands within its protective timber fence on a walkway overlooking a beach filled with umbrellas, gazebos, deck-chairs and people. In the foreground, a man and a woman walking towards each other are about to pass the tree in opposite directions. In the distance, swimmers stand or bob in a small surf. Beyond the white of breaking waves, the ocean matches the sky’s blue intensity.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 6

  • Knitters Run Wild

    The lower stretch of a telegraph pole is completely covered by five lengths of knitting, each with different colours and patterns. The display includs a trio of big, three-dimensional knitted flowers with long green knitted stems - two flowers on the middle swatch and one on the bottom. The top swatch has a pink heart on a green background.