Hugh Hamilton

I have always loved flight. My father was an airline pilot before I was born and I grew up with the thought that one day I might fly too, but I never learnt. But like a lot of us, I dream of it. Apparently Freudians think it symbolises sex but sometimes the cigar really is only a cigar. Apparently I got this job from the lightness of some of my portraits which is nice since I tend to think I have a tendency to dark and heavy...but it was enormous fun to hang large people from wires and encourage them to be blown away by the wind. 

I've been in Sydney for the last two weeks, tidying up my life (my mother is selling her house and I needed to sort the storage of a lot of my life out). Yes, I was there for the dust storm. No, I did not photograph it..... More pictures seemed a little superfluous...given everyone in Sydney was frantically photographing it with any and every camera that was at hand.

Johnny Carter's been training young swimmers at Sydney's Palm Beach for over fifty years. To see him work is to see another era in action. All the boys get called Jimmy and all the girls Maggie, no matter what their real names are. There is no political correctness here, but the kids seem to love it. These were shot in January 2008 at my friend Ruth's suggestion, since her son William was one of the kids in these pictures.