• Artist Bio
• Craftsmanship
• Links

• contact

  POSTAL

  Hugh Brown

  PO Box 214

  Darlington WA

  Australia 6070

  EMAIL

  First name:* Last name:* Email:* Age group:* Please specify 0-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 55+ Birthday

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 January February March April May June July August September October November December 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

  Country:* Please specify Australia Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombi Comoros Congo (Brazzaville) Congo Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic East Timor (Timor Timur) Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia, The Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, North Korea, South Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepa Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Post code:* Phone: Message: Subscribe to the newsletter How did you find us?* Please specify Google Other search engine Hugh Brown book Newspaper / magazine Word of mouth Other Other

• news

  { 2011-01-27 }

  See a selection of Hugh's Pilbara Limited Edition Photographic Prints at Ecali Fine Jewellery: 91 Rokeby Road Subiaco.  Next to the Witches Caldron!

  { 2011-01-26 }

  In early 2010 Hugh was one of eight professional photographers engaged by Panasonic Australia.  They were each given three Lumix amateur cameras and ask...

  { 2010-12-31 }

  December 2010 capped off a big year for Hugh when he, and a videographer travelled to West Africa to document the lives of the artisanal miners of Burkina Fa...

  Read more news ...

Collectable prints

Lake Eyre and the Channel Country

Sign-up for the quarterly newsletter for a chance to win a photographic print valued at A$1,400.

Over the past couple of years I was fortunate to photograph Birdsville, the Channel Country, the Simpson Desert and Lake Eyre before and after heavy rain.

In May 2009 I travelled north of Birdsville to photograph a pelican colony of some fifty thousand pelicans brought there by heavy rains in the Lake Eyre catchment.  It was an amazing sight.

In September 2009 I travelled to Birdsville to photograph the large dust storms that frequent the area at that time of year.  I waited six days for zero result and had fuelled up and was about to head through to the Gulf of Carpentaria for some other work.  At the last minute I decided to stay and was rewarded with the largest dust storm the area had seen in seventy years.

The September dust storm was the one that rolled into Brisbane and Sydney, and a rescue we effected made all of the major news bulletins down the eastern seaboard.  A man had rolled his vehicle in the middle of the Simpson Desert near Poeppel's Corner and was the equivalent of any snow blizzard I had encountered.  Amazing stuff and one of the highlights of my photographic career.

Then in 2010 I returned to Birdsville after a huge amount of rain.  We took a helicopter over two days from Birdsville, over the Simpson Desert and then down into Lake Eyre and Cooper Creek.  The amount of rain was phenomenal and Lake Eyre was the fullest it had been since 1974 when the lake last filled.

The Channel Country and Birdsville are special places for me and I have a number of special friends in the area now.  This is an area where the effects of drought and flooding rains are emphasised as much as anywhere else I have travelled.

I hope you enjoy these images.

 

About Hugh Brown Collectable prints

In recent years, I have tried to focus on those aspects of the world that are disappearing and undergoing rapid change.  Landscapes, occupations, peoples, cultures and towns are but some examples.

To date I’ve produced four photographic coffee table books.  Each of these sold out reasonably quickly but most significantly for me, they now stand as a photographic record of places at a time in Western Australia’s history.  Already many of the people photographed have passed on and landscapes and industries have disappeared.

In 2003 I spent three weeks on the Kimberley Coast documenting the operations of one of Australia’s largest pearling companies.  Then no-one could ever have thought that pearling would all but disappear along the Kimberley Coast.  A victim of rising labour costs, disease and cheap imports from Indonesia.

As pearling disappeared, mining flourished.  I was fortunate to document the emergence of China and the mining boom.  Back then geologists said to me on numerous occasions that a person were extremely lucky if they could say one of the companies they’d worked with had made the transition from exploration to production.

I’ve been documenting the Pilbara since the arrival of the early drill-rigs, the huge equipment transported to and from the region and some of the world’s largest mines.

I was perhaps the only photographer to document the Pilbara at the peak of the global financial meltdown.  A time when entire mines were shut down and ports were empty or ships were not being loaded.

I’ve continued to photograph the changing fabric of Western and Outback Australia. The desire to document history makes up a large part of who I am and what I do.

Three years ago I photographed one of Northern Australia’s most famous bull-catchers in the far North Kimberley.  I pulled together the entire town of Nullagine for a group photograph in 2008 and, soon after, I pulled together the last eight residents of Wittenoom for perhaps the last group photo of the people left in that town.

Through all of this I’ve also continued to photograph Australia’s Outback characters and to take down small parts of their stories.  It’s important to me that at least some of photos and the incredible and colourful stories of these people be recorded before they pass away.  This is a lifelong project and each time I travel I run at least one or two or three interviews and photo sessions.

I’ve also sought to focus on rare events.  Two years ago I travelled to Birdsville in the Queensland Channel Country to photograph the mass pelican migration brought about by the flowing of water into Lake Eyre.  We spent nine days waiting for the weather to break. Then we took a helicopter and photographed an amazing colony of 60,000 pelicans from the air.  In mid 2010 I returned again and photographed Lake Eyre’s largest flood since 1974.

My desire to get into remote or greenfields locations has also lead to travel into some of the most remote and pristine parts of Africa and Papua New Guinea.

In 2008 I travelled into a remote part of the Congo Basin.  There I was fortunate to photograph a pygmy tribe that had never had white contact.  These photos are unique.

In 2007 I undertook my first trip into the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.  Most of the people I photographed had never seen a camera and I collected some unique images of a people that would shortly undergo massive upheaval.

The only access to the villages I photographed was by helicopter and the villages were almost totally devoid of any form of crime, violence, rubbish and the impacts of drugs and alcohol.  These photos in years to come will also be of significant historical importance.  Many of the villages I photographed continued to hunt with bows and arrows.

In years to come I will be the only photographer to have documented the change in these villages that resulted from the arrival of white man.

It’s impossible to be everywhere and to capture every significant historical event.  I hope that with the work I do, that I at least get to record those places and events that very few photographers get the chance to see and experience.  I hope that these will one day be an important historical record for Australia and the other countries that I visit.