It has been a few years now since I first emailed Simon Larbalestier with some questions regarding his photographic work up to that time. I was hoping for a response from a talented photographer I had never met but whose work I had long admired. Despite being inexperienced in the craft of interviewing, I was happily surprised to get a reply and some answers to my, in retrospect, fairly mundane questions.

The work I was familiar with was the now iconic images that graced the covers of the Pixies albums of the late 1980's and early 1990's brilliantly integrated into the designs of Vaughan Oliver for 4AD records. I was dying to find out who Surfer Rosa really was and if the amazing hirsute back of the man on the cover of Come On Pilgrim was real. More than this I wanted to find out from where this stunning imagery emerged. What kind of person conceived these images and what ingredients went into building such an influential body of work? The only clue I had was the tiny modest script on the inside sleeve of Surfer Rosa, 'Photography: Simon Larbalestier'.

The alchemy of Vaughan Oliver's designs and Simon Larbalestier's imagery are now forever locked in with the aesthetic of the Pixies. The result is a set of highly original images that provide the ideal visual counterpart to the eccentric, atmospheric and often disturbing lyrics and sound of the band. Not just a literal interpretations, but extensions of the musical experience. This fortuitous meeting of creative and original talents has resulted in a set of visual and musical packages that have, in terms of popular culture, far exceeded any use-by date.

At the time Larbalestier was moving well beyond the constructed and manipulated compositions that served so well to provide the sinister, dark, and startling series of album covers. His new venture took him to Europe and the Sibillini Mountains in Le Marché near the east cost of Italy where his lens took in the brooding and evocative scenes of abandoned monasteries and storm sculpted trees and landscapes.

Together with artist Michael Eldridge, who has since based his own studio in this area, they established a new collaborative project 'The Physik Garden'. The initial concept for the project was an organic, multi-faceted and experimental reaction to the local landscape, abandoned buildings and wilderness areas. The project evolved through paintings and photography to writing, poetry and multimedia, via a website www.physikgarden.com that continues to attract and publish creative contributions from around the world.

Larbalestier has since pursued his fascination with isolated and wild locations and the influences of different cultures on the landscape through journeys to Australia, India, Cambodia and Thailand. Based between Thailand and England over the past few years he has been building a large volume of work documenting the intimate and the awe-inspiring culture and landscapes of South East Asia. The new images explore the temples of Thailand and the magnificent ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia as well as recurring themes such as Buddhist prayer flags, jungle forests and stark deserted landscapes.

After corresponding for several years I finally met Labalestier during his trip to Australia in 2001 and was fortunate to be able to travel with him on a couple of occasions. The first trip was to Wilson's Promontory at the Southern tip of Victoria. This area is a spectacular National Park featuring mountains, lush valleys teeming with kangaroos, emus and wombats and spectacular beaches. It was going to be interesting to see how Larbalestier would interpret such a picture postcard landscape. I couldn't connect such a lush and relatively benign landscape with what I knew of his work, the dark and shadowy atmosphere of his European images.

Fate was smiling on us or rather, howling down on us, as our group of five hiked to a little known area in the north of The Prom known as the Big Drift through driving rain and steadily gusting wind. There were no bright, sunny beaches or glittering seas to greet us on this occasion; everything was reduced to grainy sepia through the salty spray of rain and driving wind.

At the top edge of the dunes we were nearly knocked off our feet as the amazing sand drift opened out below us. The wind was screaming through the huge sandy valley below, up the sides of distant dunes and spouting metres into the air. A few minutes later Larbalestier was a small speck in the distance, braced against the wind and stinging sand, in search of an ideal subject. The resulting photographs reveal a whole new aspect of this picturesque part of the world, transformed into a barely recognisable wind-blasted storm-scape and captured in a wild and dramatic light.

Another trip took us to Lake Mungo in New South Wales. A truly spectacular landscape resulting from massive erosion arcing along the far edges of a series of salt lakes leaving gullies and columns of exposed soil sculpted by the elements over centuries. Fossilised remains of extinct marsupials and some of the earliest humans have been discovered in this area and as a photographic subject was even better than anticipated. The resulting prints look more like images from another planet let alone this unique earthbound location.

There is a keen observation of the spiritual in Larbalestier's work not just in many of his subjects but deeper, metaphysically in the atmospheric qualities of the images. The neutral tones of the black and white prints enhance this mood in the gleaming highlights of tree trunk textures emanating from the rich shadow areas and the dramatic light of approaching storms or cascading waterfalls. My enthusiasm for his work gets stronger as each new series of images reaches the printing stage, a rare but exciting event these days when time allows amidst the epic journeys.

Neil Chenery
January 2004

Neil Chenery is an artist and designer, living and working in Melbourne, Australia. He is also the web designer for www.simon-larbalestier.co.uk.

This article is © Copyright Neil Chenery 2004. All images are © Copyright Simon Larbalestier 2000 - 2004. No material contained in this article may be reproduced without the written consent of the author or photographer.