I want to transform how people think and feel about the world. 
I make images that capture the continuous beauty and fleeting truth of things that are.  My photographs explore an instant of timelessness, preserving complex splendor in what would otherwise be evanescent and ephemeral moments, forever lost in time and forgotten.

​I produced my first fine art photograph in 1978.  The world is filled with beautiful places, exotic animals and fascinating people and capturing their allure is not unlike treasure hunting.  When I make a photograph, my goal is to capture something unique, something special in the frame that defies description with just words.  Making a technically good image has become as easy as buying a postcard or pressing a button on an iPhone but making an inspiring image that moves one to feel something on a deeper level is elusive.  I look through my viewfinder hoping to see, capture or coax a subject's soul.  I work on my images in the darkroom or on my computer, trying to see something in them that is other than what they might appear to be at first glance.  

When I collect an image in my camera, I try to imagine the story the subject is trying to tell me, to tell us all.  My visual art feels like poetry to me sometimes.  Images have rhythm, rhyme and cadence that all contribute to a metaphor or allegory that exceeds a visual subject, verb and object.  Some people write a poem pulling words from a dictionary.  All the words found in every great poem are there.  However, it is the poet who chooses just the right words, putting them in just the right order, giving their words a soul and shining a light on an important, often evanescent message.

I made my first real photographs when I travelled through Europe as a very young man in 1978.  I was seventeen and had a beat up old 35mm camera and rolls of Kodachrome and figured only one in a million of my photographs would be any good.  So I decided to hedge my odds by trying to shoot a million images.  I didn't come close, but that was my mentality at the time. I am showing one of those images from 1978 at this exhibit.  Its an image at the Munich HBF, bright gleaming rails laid on a sea of dark, leading our eyes to look towards the setting sun.  The most recent images I will present at the exhibit are from Kakadu and New Zealand, composed this year.

I spent more than one third of my adult life living and working in countries other that the one in which I was born.  My camera is my lens and I am the nomad.  The world, difficult as it has been to have endured these past couple of years, has been an excellent mentor and guide and my photographs might reflect that just why I feel that way.

I have made pictures of subjects from around the world that have moved me, that have touched my spirit, and I hope they might move you as well at my exhibition at the Woolloongabba Art Gallery from November 22 through the 27th.  I will be exhibiting approximately 35 pieces including eight large architectural works.  Please join us.  If you have other questions, please contact me at johnarthurlittle@gmail.com.