Author Joan Fleming launches book ‘Song of Less’

We photographed the book launch event of 'Song of Less', at Mycelium Studios in Brunswick East, for its local author, Joan Fleming.

As per the blurb of the book:

Madrid, Spain 2019 – the end of the UN Climate Conference – another moral failure on the part of those who could have made change. I go back to the labour union hall that all the activist groups have been using as a headquarters to help with the clean-up. There are only a few of us left. I take on the communal kitchen and bin heads of broccoli gone to dusty seed and half-used jars of slimy lima beans. I wash towers of greasy plastic cups with cold water and floor cleaner, because that’s all there is. The door to the room that held the expensive sound equipment has been broken – no, not just broken, but thoroughly smashed. There is talk of a missing key, something lost in translation. The word ‘smithereens’ comes to mind.

 

In a back room littered with cardboard and paint tins, I find a giant papier-mâché head of a grandmother that First Nations activists fashioned for their part in the climate march. Alone in the echoing halls, it feels like silence and time are demanding something of me – an act of great care – though I don’t know how to rise to it.

 

The crisis is upon us, but abstraction is a bulwark. Deafness, everywhere. We have come to an edge. I want to find a way of taking the truth into my body, and then putting it down into the ground. From somewhere offstage, a misery of voices begins to murmur in the scrounge. What starts up is a grief work. I wrap the grandmother head in a pall of plastic sheeting and carry it across the city to Librería Desperate Literature in the rain.

 

–Joan Fleming

We felt that the basement area of Mycelium Studios a very befitting venue for the launch. Like with any sort of live performance; as to not spoil the vibe of the event, we were limited in terms of being able to use a camera flash, meaning we had to rely on the ambient lighting, which was basically entirely candlelight.

Nevertheless we don't let that challenge get in the way of producing the images that our client was seeking.

We provide photography and videography services for all sorts of events in Melbourne and all across Victoria, including book launches and product launches. Get in contact to enquire and to get a quote.