Vanessa Harper-Mathews

I’m beyond thrilled to share that FIVE of my images were shortlisted and have been Highly Commended/Commended in the Australian Photography Landscape Awards! Competing with over 2,000 entries, this recognition means a lot to me, especially since the competition also supports The Australian Conservation Foundation, @ausconservation (Australia’s national environment organisation) 🌏🌱& one very close to my heart. As a photographer, it’s easy to feel invisible in a world overflowing with images. Sometimes it can be disheartening when your work doesn’t seem to reach the audience you hope for. This recognition came at the perfect time, reminding me that my passion for the natural environment & its beauty and my dedication to capturing it through my photography can make a difference. Thank you to @australianphotography_magazine for making me and my work feel seen & to everyone who takes the time to like and post comments on my work, it means more than you know and to @mikeduff17 who endlessly supports me on my creative journey. Congratulations also to all the other incredibly talented photographers. Here’s to continuing to find inspiration in the beauty around us and protecting our natural world in all the ways we can! 🌱📸 All images shot on #leica M10 & M11 . . . #leicam11 #leicam10 #leicaau #leicaphotography #savetheplanet #ausphotomag #LandscapeAwards #leica #leica_camera #naturephotography #AustralianConservationFountion #passionfornature #keepgoing #seen

Merry Christmas family, friends and followers! Wishing you all love, peace and light for the year ahead! Big love xxx

And as Autumn’s chill begins to creep into the air, I feel the pull of the outback growing stronger, drawing me back to its untamed embrace. In the embrace of the bush, time slows to a languid pace, and the frantic hustle of modern life fades into insignificance. Here, amidst the red sands and rugged terrain, I find solace in the simplicity of existence, stripped bare of distractions and pretenses. It’s a primal dance of survival and resilience, where life blooms defiantly in the face of adversity, where the ochre soil tells tales of resilience and adaptation. For it is in the heart of the Australian desert that I find my truest self, where the whispers of the ancient land speak to the depths of my soul, calling me home once more. Reposts. Shot on expired film. Lake Mungo… (150,000 years in the making). Remembering my Dad, photographing with his old Pentax MX and using roles of expired film that he left in his camera bag from over 20 years ago. Knowing how much he would have loved this place. Feeling and listening to country and hearing the breath of the ancestors of this land whispering their stories in the gusts of the sunset winds. Miss you Dad, still, after all these years. Never forgotten. Always wandering…never lost BTW- for all my photographer friends, the Pentax MX is, at least as far as I can work out – still the smallest fully mechanical metered SLR camera ever produced. First produced in the mid 70s, it’s magic in its simplicity and size. Next to my Leica M11 it’s compact in comparison. Love analogue, always have, and have many analogue cameras in my collection but this is still one of my favs. to use. #outback #outbackaustralia #outbackphotography #filmphotography #filmphotographer #analogue #landscapephotography #aussiebush #naturedoesitbest #shootfilm #pentaxmx #pentaxmxphotography

Illusion is not always deception. Sometimes it is the veil between worlds. The sense between what we believe is real and what we feel beneath it. The modern world teaches us to trust surfaces. But the Kami live in distortion — in reflections, shadows, blurred edges, and the spaces in between certainty and sanity. Perhaps illusion is not false at all. Perhaps it is simply another doorway into truth. FROM ‘DIGITAL KAMI’ series words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 #DigitalKami #LiminalSpace #Illusion #KamiSpirit #DigitalArt Ethereal QuantumDreaming SpiritInTheMachine ContemporaryArt NeonSouls

There is a place where colour is not fixed— where it breathes, dissolves, and becomes. Light moves through these forms like memory, bending through unseen dimensions, softening the edges of what we think is real. In these fleeting frames, emotion is not held—it passes through, a current in the vast, invisible field that connects everything. The Kami do not arrive here— they are already present, woven into the fabric of movement, flickering between moments, between selves, between time. This is the liminal space— where feeling becomes form, where colour becomes frequency, where light becomes a language spoken beyond words. To witness it is to remember— we too are made of this shifting, luminous field. FROM ‘DIGITAL KAMI’ series words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 . . . #digitalkami #quantummoments #australianartist #tokyoart #leica_camera

In the quiet garden between moments, where light bends and time forgets its name, they arrive. Not as myth, not as memory— but as presence. Kami— breathing through leaves that tremble without wind, moving through bodies that blur at the edges, living in the spaces we pass through too quickly to see. Here, nothing is fixed. A step becomes a ripple, a gesture becomes a doorway, a shadow becomes a spirit remembering itself. This is the in-between— the soft seam where worlds touch. Where the ancient does not disappear, but adapts… slipping quietly into our modern skin. In this garden, time does not move forward— it unfolds. And if you slow enough, if you soften your gaze, you might feel them— not separate from you, but moving with you. Always here. Always becoming. . . FROM ‘DIGITAL KAMI’ series words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 + Leica MP #Kodak Tri-X 400 & T-MAX 400 . . . #digitalkami #quantummoments #australianartist #tokyoart

They were never gone. Only waiting— in the hush between footsteps, in the flicker of light against glass, in the breath that moves through leaves and bodies alike. The Kami do not belong to the past. They do not fade. They do not end. They shift. They bend with us— slipping between concrete and current, through neon glow and passing trains, through the blur of a world that forgot how to look slowly. In movement, they reveal themselves— not as something seen, but something felt. A presence in the in-between. A softness inside velocity. A quiet pulse beneath the noise. Nature was never separate. Spirit was never lost. Only changing form, only learning new languages of light. . . FROM ‘DIGITAL KAMI’ series words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 + Leica MP #Kodak Tri-X 400 & T-MAX 400 . . . #leicampfilm #MyLeicaPhoto #StoryInMonochrom @magnumlearn #documentaryphotographer

Tokyo moves like a living current. Neon flickers against the night, trains breathe in and out of stations, footsteps dissolve into the endless rhythm of the city. In this place, time does not move in straight lines — it folds, overlaps, slips between moments. My Digital Kami images live in that in-between space. Where bodies blur into motion. Where colour and shadow pass through one another. Where a moment is already disappearing as it arrives. Tokyo is a threshold city — suspended between ancient spirits and electric futures. In the movement of its streets there are small, fleeting portals… fragments of presence that appear and vanish before we can fully hold them. These images are my attempt to stand inside that flow for a breath. To witness the quiet poetry of impermanence — the beauty of things passing through. A city of ghosts, light, and motion. A city always becoming. Digital Kami — Tokyo words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 . . #leica_camera #MyLeicaPhoto #tokyosoul @magnumlearn # australian photographer

Studies of ephemerality. In black and white, the world exhales. Film holds the pause between heartbeats — grain like memory, light like a whisper that almost disappears. There is something sacred in the absence of colour. It asks us to feel instead of consume. To listen instead of rush. And then — water. Pastel washes dissolving edges, bleeding into one another like emotion before language. Soft pinks, muted sky, pale earth — tenderness made visible. And gold. Fallen Ginkgo leaves, ancient and luminous, pressed into paper like quiet prayers. A tree that remembers before we did. A symbol of endurance, resilience, the beauty of survival. Black and white. Water and air. Softness and metal. Ephemeral and eternal. This is the space I return to — where fragility is strength, where impermanence glows, where the smallest leaf can hold the light. words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews B&W images Leica MP + Kodak Tri-X Artworks-watercolors & gold leaf on paper #leica_camera #australianartist #poeticsoul #tokyoart #kodaktrix400

Tokyo feels like a held breath. Colour hums in neon veins — and then the world slips into black and white, into silver halides and shadow. In between frames, something trembles. Liminal streets where no one belongs and everyone passes through. A woman dissolves into motion. A doorway becomes a threshold between selves. Light fractures, then disappears. Ephemerality is not loss — it is the proof that we were here at all. In colour, the city pulses. In black and white, it remembers. And somewhere between the two, Tokyo becomes a dream I walked through but could never hold. words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews shot on leicaQ3 + Leica MP #Kodak Tri-X 400 & T-MAX 400 . . . #leicampfilm #MyLeicaPhoto #StoryInMonochrom @magnumlearn # film leica_camera

Ephemerality lives in the space between movement and memory. Nothing holds still long enough to be possessed — silk becomes air, footsteps become rhythm, presence dissolves into trace. Identity is not fixed but passing, like breath on glass. The infrared forest answers in another language. Leaves burn white, shadows deepen, the familiar world slips sideways. What feels ancient becomes momentary; what feels solid reveals its fragility. Light rewrites everything. These images are not about what is seen, but what is vanishing as we look. A body turning. A path fading. A season already leaving. We are always mid-disappearance — soft, luminous, temporary — held only by the brief mercy of attention. All 📷images, words, artworks©️@vanessa_harper_mathews Digital images shot on Leica Q3, infrared images shot on Leica MP . . . #InfraredPhotography #leicaq3 #leica_camera #leicamp #analogphotography

Sharing some images from my recent project- DIGITAL KAMI-SPIRITS OF THE ELECTRIC SHRINE. Tokyo is alive with two seemingly opposite forces: the spiritual world (kami, ancestral presence, myth) and the hyper-digital. But perhaps they’re not opposites — maybe the neon lights, screens, and signals are just new vessels for spirits. This work is part of a long term project (Digital Kami and Persephone’s Flowers (South Korea) that form an interconnected constellation exploring how cultural history, presence and time are experienced, sensed, and momentarily revealed, tracing the sacred in contemporary city life while revealing techno driven cities as luminous, liminal landscapes where the spiritual and technological coexist. Reality is not imposed — it emerges. It is both a documentary & conceptual photographic (digital & analogue) exploration. It is photography in dialogue with painting. . . words, artworks & images © @vanessa_harper_mathews . . . #leicaq3 #MyLeicaPhoto #tokyo @magnumlearn #leica_camera #documentaryphotographer