Please note: This ebook has been specifically designed as an epublication and is optimized for viewing on Thorium Reader. Thorium Reader is the free EPUB reader of choice for Windows 10 and 11, MacOS and Linux. https://www.edrlab.org/software/thorium-reader/

If you are using a Mac you may need to download it as a PDF and view it in chrome

Entropy is Lloyd Godman’s photographic response to the devastating Victorian Black Saturday bushfire in Australia of February 2009, near where he lives at St Andrews. It does not deal with the impact on humanity with photographs of burnt cars and destroyed houses, but focuses entirely on plants and the regeneration of the bush.

His ongoing intrigue with light and photosynthesis is fully engaged in this project photographing the revival of the bush from grey powder ash and black tree trunks to thick verdant green bush over a period of years. The ebook follows the evolution of the project from taking a few single photographs, through to the many thousands of triptychs, and beyond to the giant photographic intricate mosaics and the innovative and complex self-generating video projection work. It documents the creative process from taking a few photographs to the realization of a significant body of work and a major exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography. In the process it offers information on creating triptychs and panorama images, the power of wide angle photographic perspectives.

For the botanist it offers a visual insight to how nature can respond after an extreme fire event, which species of plants recover and the rate of recovery, while for fire fighters it presents a visual clue to how the bush burns.

The project is a metaphor for his concept of the planet as a gigantic abstract photosensitive emulsion.

“the largest photosensitive emulsion we know of is the planet earth. As vegetation grows, dies back, changes colour with the seasons, the “photographic image” that is our planet alters. Increasingly human intervention plays a larger role in transforming the image of the globe we inhabit”. Lloyd Godman

The work acts as witness to the green spirit within the earth that overcomes a grey ghost. The macro becomes micro and visa versa, forbidding monotones are replaced with subtlety of texture and colour, simplicity is replaced with complexity. Paradoxically, both order and chaos is found in ash and regenerated emerald bush.