It’s a real accolade for the Shire of West Arthur that its new museum has been acknowledged in the Australian Museums and Galleries Association’s Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNA).
I’m happy to have been asked to photograph the Betty Brown Historical Centre museum before it opened, to provide images for the Shire and for Creative Spaces, the company that was brought in to create the display spaces, which are housed in the old Roads Board building in Darkan, as part of the West Arthur Health and Resource centre.
In photographing the space, I needed to capture the overall essence of the space as well as details of objects. Because some items are housed in protective perspex display boxes there was reflection on the clear surfaces. A polarising filter on the lens helped to cut out the reflections and show the contents clearly.
To show that the space has interactive features I used a friend as a model who interacted with the displays – scanning a QR code, opening a drawer, writing on a note to pin on the memorial board. To show that the space is used and welcoming I shot some images with a slow shutter speed to emphasise the displays with human figures moving about the space.
