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PHOTO A DAY: NOTES FROM 2020
Julie Sundberg - M Ellen Burns

JS:
We started this project as a way of keeping in touch. Our visual conversation was a salve for the isolation that artists often feel and a promise to ourselves to make work every day. We had no plan to show our project to anyone else, let alone exhibit. It was for ourselves. On the surface we seem very different from each other, separated not only by a generation but also by a vast distance: M in Kalgoorlie and Julie in Sydney. But we share an appreciation for desolation, melancholy and weirdness in all its forms. We were comfortable in sharing our vulnerabilities and never pretended that everything was fine. There were times when we both retreated to dark interiors and plugged into our respective screens. We battled depression and isolation by talking long walks; M exploring the outback and Julie the urban landscape of Sydney’s inner west.
There was also illness and catastrophe. My partner spent 9 days in hospital in the middle of the pandemic. I fell over 5 times, fracturing my wrist and injuring my shoulder. I spent a lot of time talking to doctors. I missed my friends, most of whom are interstate or overseas and was unable to visit my elderly father in Adelaide. I started a new project unlike anything I’d ever done before. Strangely the isolation of the lockdown made my world physically smaller yet intellectually larger, as I tapped into my 'inmost consciousness'. This project sustained us. We could have off days, we could take ‘bad’ photos and know they would be received without judgment. We learned that sometimes there’s art even in bad photos.

We surrendered to small moments, and tried not to overly sanitise and curate our lives.

MB:
I had been living in Kalgoorlie, a small city in outback WA for about 6 months when Julie and I began emailing each other a Photo of The Day.
Covid-19 hadn’t impacted Australia yet, but we were in the midst of a terrifying bushfire season, both in NSW and in WA. I was feeling isolated, living far from family and friends, and struggling to find connections.
Photography is habitual for me, and often I take pictures while out walking my dog without thinking about why or what for. It’s compulsive and I’ve come to the conclusion that it helps me make sense of my surroundings.
Sending the photos to Julie is a way of talking to another photographer in our own language. We are drawn to similar subjects and after looking at our year in pictures, I believe we both have a pull towards suburban debris, the banal, as well as a dark kind of beauty. I never intended these images to be seen by anyone but Julie, and occasionally a small handful of friends on my private and anonymous instagram account.

Part sketchbook, part conversation, drawing from internal feeling and external circumstance, this was our 2020.