Don't Look Down

From ancient times to the present, the Alps have had mythological, spiritual and romantic significance. Recognisable peaks, like the Matterhorn, have become trademarks for chocolate companies and the like; their rugged profiles filtering into our everyday lives, even in places far away. Over the past century, advances in engineering have made access to viewing platforms easy in the Alps, and now thousands of tourists line up to photograph these scenic vistas every day. For his series Don’t Look Down, Rimmer sought to alter these views, and thereby question the experience of what we already know in our collective memories. By deliberately inverting the image into an unnatural colour palette, the landscapes become foreign and unsettling.

Brad Rimmer is an Australian photographer who works on long-term projects of portraiture, landscape and social documentation. Based in Fremantle, he seeks to uncover the human within often alienating everyday environs. He is the author of three photo books with T&G Publishing: Silence (2010), Don’t Look Down (May 2019), and Nature Boy (September 2019).

In 2017, Rimmer received the Artsource / Atelier Mondial residency in Basel Switzerland. The images created during that time form the basis for Don’t Look Down.

Numerous national and corporate art collections have acquired Rimmer’s work, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Wesfarmers Collection, Artbank, St John of God Health Care and Murdoch University.

Paola Anselmi is an independent curator and arts writer based in Perth, Western Australia. Over 25 years she has held curatorial and research roles at several prestigious art institutions and collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Centre for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy. A PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, her research focus is Western Australian photographic history. She is a regular contributor to Australian arts publications on Western Australian contemporary practice and has published numerous exhibition catalogue essays.