Dan A’Vard Photography

11/12/2023

I'm starting a business in 2024 selling lamps featuring my original artwork like this mock up. I'm trying to find out a little more about who might be interested and what people might be interested in. If you have a few minutes, I'd love it if you could fill out this short, confidential survey. If you're interested in buying, there's a pre-order link at the end of the survey (for delivery in April-June 2024).
https://forms.gle/Jr3K8NjRKgZDttJu9

05/09/2023

This week is your last chance to catch ‘Between Reality and Dreamland’ at in Fitzroy.

To make it even easier to drag you out of the house we’re having an artist’s roundtable THIS Saturday at 2pm.

Come, explore the art and ask us difficult questions!

10/08/2023

Sometimes in the ordinary we can find the extraordinary. Sometimes it is light and sometimes it is dark. Always, we find something about ourselves.

It was illuminating presenting this work at today for critique as I enter the final stages of my MFA

28/09/2022

08/06/2021

03/06/2021

What have I been doing?

Last year, I moved away from commercial portraits, and wedding & event photography towards storytelling through photos and film.

One of the big projects that has been bubbling behind the scenes is a documentary series in collaboration with Hannah Gabrielle and Sincerely Survivor.

We're in development now for our pilot episode, planning to start shooting later this year, exploring Hannah's lived experience of mental health, and the role that The Arts have played in her healing.

But we need your help. We're currently funding the next stage of development and have launched a crowdfunding campaign.

We're supported by Partnerships Australia and their MATCHLab program who will match up to $5000 if we raise it this financial year!

Visit our page at https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/sincerely-survivor-the-documentary/ to learn more about the documentary and to help us explore advocate for a fairer mental health system that is designed for those it serves.

19/05/2021

Moein + Cora

18/05/2021

Andrew Wurster's new book In The Woods is super exciting. 28 artists from around the world have contributed images that explore how we see nature, time and place. Not only that, but it will be printed in Italy on beautiful Italian papers.

I'm very excited to have a few of my own images in there and proud of the film that we have made to promote it.

Click through to watch the film, support the project and buy yourself a copy of this beautiful book.

https://www.ulule.com/in-the-woods/

Landscape Photo Books

17/04/2021

Cora x Biggie at her wedding with Moeen.

02/10/2020

I've been honoured to work with The Francis Project, a new school for peace builders, founded on old principles and Franciscan pedagogy.

Here is the first of our collaborations to tell their story. They have an 'open day' coming up on Monday night. Come and see.

25/07/2020

‘When you step onto the land, start by listening with your eyes, seeing with your ears’

16/06/2020

I’m not perfect. I have said and done very racist things in my past. I repent of them. I still have my own unconscious biases based on race that I am working through. I have been a part of the problem, but am working toward being a part of the solution.

It’s easy to say that this is not our fault, that we’re not racist so we ‘are doing our bit’. But both the racism of the past and the current occurrences of racism in Australia have real world impact on people alive in our society today.

I know it is confronting to many of us, but Australia is a racist country. 75% of Australians have an unconscious negative bias toward Aboriginal Australians:
(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-09/three-in-four-negative-bias-against-indigenous-australians-study/12335184)

Not only that but for more than 200 years we operated on the legal principle of Terra Nullius, that Australia was unoccupied before European people ‘discovered’ it.
From 1788 until the 1920s, we engaged in a violent war against Aboriginal people and communities in Australia known as the frontier wars, with regular massacres of Aboriginal people where they were shot, bayoneted, poisoned, and marched off cliffs. (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/04/the-killing-times-the-massacres-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confront?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)

Aboriginal people were deliberately separated from their homes and families and moved to missions spread far and wide across the states. They were forbidden from speaking their language or praciticing their culture. If they worked, their wages were paid to the State and they were given rations of flour, sugar, tea, jam, meat and rice. They were not able to work and care for themselves (the state forced them to rely on handouts for generations, and now we call them out for being lazy?). We did this for 150+ years, and now we just expect Aboriginal people to have the same capacity and wealth as non-Aboriginal people? If this were a footrace, we have a 150+ year head start. (http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/32-3-21.pdf)

Throughout most of the 20th Century every state had a policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their parents, resulting in the Stolen Generations and further devastating Aboriginal People’s connection to family, culture and Country. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations)

Until 1973, Australia had a ‘White Australia’ immigration policy that forbid people of non-European origin. It wasn’t the overwhelmingly easy transition you might imagine. Politicians from both sides of parliament waxed lyrical about ‘preserving Australia for the white race’ (conveniently forgetting Aboriginal Australians, Chinese Australians from Gold Rush times, Pacific Islander Kanakas (slaves) and Maori people living in Australia). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy)

This legacy continues in many Australians. Followers of Pauline Hanson, the ‘Love It Or Leave’ brigade and the seemingly everyday Australians who still accuse anybody of Asian appearance of causing COVID.

We push this under the carpet because we don’t see it. We deny it as a society because it doesn’t happen to us. But that doesn't mean that it doesn’t happen.

That is why I am fighting. That is why I will contribute to fight until I’m dead or until everyone is treated with equal respect, has equal opportunity to thrive, has equal safety in the street and has equal opportunity to thrive.

*Note: this photo is from South West Victoria, the site of the Eumarella Wars between the local Gunditjmara people and the European settlers in this land. You can see here the terrain that made fighting a war particularly difficult (rocks, swamps, dense bush).
(https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-forgotten-war-a-haunted-land-20130809-2rnc9.html)

27/05/2020

Last week I met and photographed Colin, one of the 1,000 that Launch Housing have supported living in hotels during the COVID crisis. He spoke to ABC Melbourne this morning about his experiences.

https://twitter.com/LaunchHousing/status/1265459326585458689?s=20

“Listen to Colin, one of the 1,000 Launch Housing is supporting in motels during the virus, speaking to on about how "it took a world disaster" for him to get helped off the streets into temporary shelter. https://t.co/CyZSpy3TUp”

21/05/2020

After years of hopelessness, isolation, fatigue, depression and OC reruns, Sarah recovered from her CFS nightmare. Like other survivors though, she’s constantly aware of her body’s fragility and available energy reserves.
Sarah is one of the lucky ones, so many haven’t recovered. For more information on the , head to Emerge Australia Inc.

13/05/2020

When all you can do is bed and couch.

As Chronic Fatigue Syndrome steals your energy it also steals hope. Hope of a ‘normal’ life and hope of any given day being different to the day before. As depression kicks in, it becomes more and more important to make that effort to get out of bed, even if only to the couch.

This week Is ME/CFS awareness week and I am republishing a photo essay I shot in 2016 with Sarah, a survivor of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This illness is so much more than being a bit tired, it takes your physical health, it takes your mental health and it tries to take your identity. See Emerge Australia Inc for resources and to learn more.