JONATHAN CHERRY: What got you started with photography?

PAUL BATT: I started photography at 15, mainly as a means of photographing friends skating and doing tricks down sets of stairs. 

As I got older, it became more a creative means of recording and making sense of day-to-day life. Eventually as I took photography more seriously, I found myself at art school and started exhibiting the results.

JC: Any emerging artists inspiring you at the moment?

PB: Yeah there’s a number! I tend to have a favourite on the go at most times. At the moment I’m really enjoying Diana Scherer’s Pieces Series. Really simple idea, that’s a great example of taking something really mundane or overlooked and revealing a whole new side to it.

JC: Whats your current project all about?

PB: I have a number of projects I’m working on at the moment, although much of my work has been concerned with the same set of ideas, concerning human absence or presence in urban environment. I’ve explored this notion through out my work by documenting either people, places or object and examining the subtle variations a chosen subject, can come in.

JC: Where are you currently living and how is it shaping you?

PB: I’m living in my home city of Melbourne, Australia. I studied for a while in Germany and didn’t realise how much I felt at home here, until I returned from that. In this sense my city has provided me with a sense of self and sanctuary. While artistically it’s also where I find my subjects, so its shaped me quite a lot. 

JC: One piece of advice to recent photography graduates?

PB: Persist with your vision, remembering that any recognition will take time and that making art is often a thankless but fore filling struggle. The only other piece of advice I would give is to find a mentor doing what you’re doing and learn as much as you possibly can from them.

JC: Any big plans for 2012?

PB: Absolutely! My biggest is to finally complete my PhD in Fine Art, which is due later this year. Other than that, I’m currently finishing a few photographic projects and have a number of group exhibitions coming up, so need I also need to get my work prepped and shipped for those. 

JC: Favourite tree?

PB: Ghost Gum. It’s an Australian native eucalyptus, that grows in weird contorted forms and sheds its branches instead of it leaves. It’s got a great ominous sounding name and is a quintessential part of the Australian bush landscape, that I know and love.