Time Carved In Stone

 Book Review by Brian Rope

Time Carved In Stone: Benjamin Kopilow

All photographs, text and design by Benjamin Kopilow

Published by Benjamin Kopilow, ©2026. All rights reserved.

1^st Edition. Published in Canberra, Australia

ISBN: 978-1-291-82268-7

The cover of the book - image © Benjamin Kopilow

Benjamin Kopilow is a photographer, teacher and mentor. I have personally experienced Ben in all those roles when he has spoken and shown his images at our local photographic society, and evaluated members’ works providing quality commentary and advice.

Kopilow’s interest in visual art didn’t begin with photography, but with conversations with his painter father as he grew up - about colour, shape, light, and composition. Painting wasn’t his talent, but photography became his way of exploring those same ideas. More than twenty years after a mid-30s career change to photography, this experienced and award-winning photographer says he is still fascinated by the way light, colour and composition can transform an ordinary scene into something memorable.

In 2025 Kopilow and his wife travelled through some of the world's great desert and wilderness places, those of California and the Great Colorado Basin. He says the four weeks journey enabled him to explore and experience those places through form, shadow, texture, colour, and scale. He believes landscapes are sculptures shaped by time, and geological forces, then revealed in different ways by ever changing light.

Using images captured during the journey, Kopilow has now created this book. Time Carved in Stone is not simply images showing readers where they travelled. Much more significantly, this artist (for that is what he is) through his photo-art and accompanying words enables us to vicariously see what he refers to as a journey through deep time.

Each of twenty chapters looks at another place. First up is Death Valley with its salt-cracked floor. The last explores the polished granite walls of Yosemite National Park, well-known for the famous Ansel Adams’ images of it. 

Death Valley © Benjamin Kopilow

Along the way we see various canyons including, of course, the Grand Canyon. The Kolb Brothers (who invented the selfie) pioneered the capturing of this canyon’s beauty in black and white in the early 1900s, but Kopilow’s beautiful colour images here are something else. We see the folded spine of Capitol Reef and the vast red silence of Monument Valley. The artist tells us that all of his landscape images are not merely describing, they allow us to see them in quiet contemplation. He is right.

Before the first chapter there are informative words, a map and an image of the Colorado Basin. Then there are 64 pages of glorious images revealing, amongst other features, Kanab and Horseshoe Bend.

Kanab Sand Caves © Benjamin Kopilow

Next some words about and images of Monument Valley inform and reveal to us that the glorious landscape and the magical sounds of traditional flutes of the Navajo. Then we learn about numerous other locations, including Factory Butte, Hickman Bridge, Escalante, Kodachrome Basin, Maple Mountain Provo, and Great Salt Lake.

In the chapter about Factory Butte there is an illustrated page of information about Buttes, Mesas, Pinnacles and Hoodoos. Here it is, so you can read it and learn if, like me, you need to.

If, again like me, you have never visited some of these places, you may not have even heard their names. Nevertheless, as you explore the pages you will recognise particular features because you have seen photos of them before. But there will be many other features that are new to you. Regardless of which category any particular image fits into for each of us, every one of them is an excellent sensory contribution to our appreciation of the geological history of these areas.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Land © Benjamin Kopilow

The images in each chapter reveal peaceful places that our minds can return to without necessarily looking at them again. I suspect those who practice meditation would consider them most useful resources.

Bryce Canyon & Fairyland © Benjamin Kopilow

We are able to explore these places that have been shaped by geology – by prehistoric oceans and inland seas, vanished deserts, restless rivers. For hundreds of millions of years, unseen geological forces have been quietly sculpting. It has been said that in these places is North America’s hidden backbone, the ancient core beneath us when flying or driving over, or walking amongst, them.

Moonscape Canyon © Benjamin Kopilow

The quality of both the words and images in this book provide a basis for us to think about the passage of time and its significance in life. Kopilow has used his personal sensory experiences to create images which have transformed the centuries old landscapes into living archives. He has delivered an excellent contribution to what is known as the quiet narrative genre, which relies primarily on his visual storytelling to convey messages, evoke emotions, and provoke thought. It challenges our perceptions and offers a deeper understanding of our human experiences.

Links to make purchases of the book in e-book, paperback and hard cover formats are available on the artist’s website, Lulu, Kobo and Ben’s Books.

This review is also available on the author's blog.

 

 

Black, White + Colour

Photography/Biography Book Review: Brian Rope

Black, White + Colour - A Biography of Mervyn Bishop

Text © Tim Dobbyn 2025

Publisher: Ginninderra Press

ISBN Standard edition: 9781761097089

ISBN International edition: 979-8-9921572-0-8

207 pp

Book cover (featuring School Bus Yarrabah, 1974 – Mervyn Bishop)

This illustrated biography of Mervyn Bishop - Australia’s first indigenous professional photographer and treasured artist - provides an intimate portrait. Well researched and clearly written, it has many examples of his fine images as well as other relevant illustrations.

Mervyn on the old Brewarrina bridge, 2019, Tim Dobbyn

Bishop fell in love with photography as a boy of 12 in his hometown of Brewarrina. Serendipitous contact with some white journalists led to a job at the Sydney Morning Herald when just 17. He says his photography is based in the newspaper world.

Closing of pub, Glebe, 1967, Mervyn Bishop

Lionel Rose, world champion bantam weight boxer before departing to the USA to defend his title, Sydney, 1968, Mervyn Bishop

One of his best-known images is Life and Death Dash which caught the anxiety and haste of a religious sister carrying a tearful boy into hospital. He hurried back to the Herald-Sun offices after taking this image to process it. However, their tabloid - the Sun - did not use it. But it is in this book.

Life and Death Dash, Sydney, 1971, Mervyn Bishop

Later, Bishop entered it in the 1971 Australian Press Photographer of the Year Award and won, receiving a medallion and AUD$2,000. But he never received the customary pay increase the Herald had given to other Award winners. This book provides a lot more information, including Bishop’s own view that he had faced a glass ceiling in that workplace.

Disillusioned, Bishop moved to Canberra as a government photographer. In that role, he took an iconic photo of Gough Whitlam pouring earth into the hands of traditional owner Vincent Lingiari. All adult Australians well know the story, the image and an equally iconic song which refers to the event. Again it is in the book.

A further well-known image, Cousins, Ralph and Jim, shows the universal joy of skipping school. Wearing school uniforms, the boys are rowing a boat on the Barwon River. They had decided it would be better to be with Mervyn who was visiting Brewarrina than to go to school. This delightful photo is accompanied here by a detailed story, revealing just how thoroughly the book’s author, Tim Dobbyn, has explored his subject’s life story.

Woman in wheelchair, Wilcannia, 1988, Mervyn Bishop

Dobbyn is a former journalist who started at Australian Associated Press in 1981 before moving to the United States in 1987 to work for Reuters. After taking a break from daily journalism, he worked freelance jobs before starting work on this biography in 2018.

NADOC 86 Exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers, Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney, 1986, William Yang

 

In 1993, significant Australian-Chinese photographer William Yang set off with Bishop to explore the relationship of Aboriginal people with the Barwon River but decided Bishop’s personal story was of greater interest. In 2003 the Sydney Opera House arranged for these two photographers to create a show for its annual showcase of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and artists. The book provides a detailed description of difficulties experienced and overcome as they created the exhibition.

After returning to Sydney, Bishop was eventually befriended by the arts scene, leading to his first solo exhibition in 1991. Sadly this victory was clouded by the death of his wife on the day of the opening. Dobbyn tells us that Bishop enjoys his current status in the art world but is irritated by artistic analysis of his work.

While often celebrated for chronicling the rising visibility of Indigenous Australians, Bishop is also proud of what he calls his “Whitefella pictures”. He carved his own path, deftly navigating the Black and White worlds of post-war Australia. The book says he has had an unadorned approach to portraiture, with no subject losing any dignity “in the presence of the humble man from Brewarrina.”

Body painting for the Marayarr Murrukundja ceremony, Indonesia, 1993, Mervyn Bishop

Bungaree: The Showman, 2012, Mervyn Bishop

 
The book is dedicated to the first inhabitants of Australia, stating their knowledge and art should be a source of pride and wonder to all Australians. This white Australian couldn’t agree more. Anyone thinking otherwise should, if possible, take a look at the superb indigenous artworks in the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain, the Artistic Director of which is Tony Albert, Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku-Yalanji peoples, one of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists. It’s at the National Gallery of Australia until 26 April 2026, then will tour nationally.

This review is also available on the author's blog. And in the April 2026 issue of the Australian Photographic Society's online magazine 'The Printer'.

LOVING - Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s & A loving City - Queerberra Revisited

LOVING - Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s

A loving City - Queerberra Revisited

Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG), Gallery 2 | 6 December 2025 to 5 April 2026

Whilst most certainly being complementary, these two exhibitions in adjoining spaces are also very different to each other. LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s is, obviously, only about men. The large number of photographs in the display is essentially monochromatic.

Installation image - LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s © Brian Rope

But, when visitors walk through into the next space to A loving City – Queerberra Revisited they will immediately see colour images hung against a background of vivid rainbow colours.

Installation image - A loving City – Queerberra Revisited © Brian Rope

The content of LOVING was created by collectors and arts professionals Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell. That married couple discovered an old photograph of two other men in a tender loving embrace at an antique store in Dallas, Texas, 25 years ago. The image sparked a passion which resulted in a global journey searching for other photographs capturing men in love. They searched flea markets, auction houses, family albums and online collections, gradually gathering from all over the world over 4,000 tender images of male couples taken between the 1850s and 1950s - 100 years of social history and the development of photography.

In 2020, they published a book internationally, showing hundreds of the previously unpublished vernacular photographs depicting romantic love between men that powerfully and movingly reasserted both that love is love and that there had always been men who loved each other. It and this exhibition tenderly portray romantic love between men. There are snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied places and situations. Often taken when male partnerships were illegal, the collectors identified the men in the images as couples by what they have described as the unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love, by their body language, and even by coded inscriptions. There is a diversity of image formats - ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, and more.

Three years later, the collection was exhibited for the first time at the Musée Rath in Geneva. Now, it is being displayed in Australia, co-presented by CMAG and the Delegation of the European Union to Australia. The photographs on display have been digitised. They tell stories which have a considerable impact when we consider them. They speak to spirit and resilience. LOVING brings to light the lives and stories of male couples from around the world - giving voice to their courage, intimacy and enduring love for their “other halves”.

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s © The Nini-Treadwell collection

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s
© The Nini-Treadwell collection

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s

© The Nini-Treadwell collection

The second exhibition, A Loving City: Queerberra Revisited, is a return to a 2017 portrait series - Queerberra by photographer Jane Duong and producer Victoria Firth-Smith.

Created between 2015 and 2017, in the lead-up to Australia’s same-sex marriage postal vote, the original project captured over 100 portraits of LGBTQIA+ Canberrans in their homes, workplaces and everyday spaces. Over weekends spent in bedrooms, workplaces, and on the streets, portraits of pride, exhaustion, defiance, love, and hope were captured with grace and honesty. Some subjects were already out. Others came out for the first time. This unique art project set out to portray the beauty of Canberra’s rich array of local identities from LGBTIQ, asexual and cisgender peoples, to drag queens and kings, and beyond. Everyday lives were captured and shared with pride - some had not been ‘out’ publicly, others were very much in the public eye.

On 15 November 2017, Canberra’s voters delivered Australia’s strongest "Yes" vote in support of marriage equality. The Queerberra book was launched the very next day. Eight years later, this revisiting of the book and original exhibition showcases 99 of the original 100 portraits from that book and invites audiences to consider how much things have changed in that time.

Caitlin and Jill, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith

 

James, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith

These two exhibitions are simultaneously intensely intimate and deeply political. Each one stands alone in its story and tone; together they form a larger narrative about connection across generations, time periods and other things that often divide us.

This review is also available on the author's blog. And a shorter version is on a Canberra City News webpage.

‘illuminate ’25

Visual Arts Exhibition Review – Brian Rope

‘illuminate ’25 - Friends of the Gardens Photographic Group

Australian National Botanic Gardens Visitors Centre Gallery

21 November – 14 December 2025

Exhibitions in the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) Visitor Centre Gallery explore the Australian environment through diverse creative forms. This annual exhibition is of photographic artworks, using light to illuminate the subjects in a variety of ways.

As always the standard of the works in this annual exhibition is high – technically and creatively eye catching. Generally, the imagery is what we expect in nature exhibitions – focussed absolutely on nature with no non-nature intrusions, fauna and flora in their natural environment, in the correct colours of the subjects, and capturing the essence of nature so highly valued by people all over the world. There are, however, a few exceptions and that is fine in my view. All the images entered in the competition associated with this event were required to have been taken in the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG), A small number not entered in the competition did not have to be ANBG subjects; but may well also have been.

There are portraits of native plants, close-up images of Australian flowers, birds and insects, and intimate landscapes to be seen in the gardens.

This year’s judges selected two works by Pam Rooney for awards. One of them Bush Dialogue: Tracks and tunnels of the scribbly gum moth larvae won the Fauna category Award. This composite of five vertical images most successfully used selections of those wonderful scribbly patterns that we all enjoy seeing in the surfaces of gum trees. The well-balanced composition is Rooney’s own artwork created from the natural artworks that are the tracks and tunnels. Another member of the Gardens Photographic Group, Karen Neufeld, was Runner-Up in the Fauna category with her image of a masked bee, titled Bubbling Bee.

Pam Rooney – Bush Dialogue

Karin.Neufeld - Bubbling Bee

A work by Narelle Aldridge Dew drops in the desert was Highly Commended in the David Cox Memorial Award which honours and celebrate the contribution made to the Photographic Group’s activities by the late David Cox. The same artwork was also the Rangers’ Choice. The rangers at ANBG are experienced educators who specialise in bringing the stories of the Gardens to life.

Narelle Aldridge – Dew drops in the desert

Amongst the works which were “different” was Ben Harvey’s cleverly titled Banksy. The image is a black and white monochrome, so we do not see the colours of the bird perched on a banksia. But the detail in the print is excellent and provides plenty to be examined, making the artwork successful and most suitable for display in a modern home.

Ben Harvey - Banksy

A work by Mohamed Rageeb titled Through the Dragon’s Eye is most eye-catching. A close up of the dragon’s colourful eye surrounded by delightful shapes and patterns of the creature’s body surface stopped me in my tracks and commanded me to use my own eyes and look into the dragon’s.

Mohamed Rageeb - Through the Dragon’s Eye

Simone Slater’s work Seven! is another artwork most visitors will spend time with. It doesn’t take a long time to work out the title. On a Xerochrysum flowering plant native to Australia, there are variegated Adonis ladybirds. How many do you think there might be?

Simone Slater – Seven

 

Another Simone Slater piece Behind the Wire was also different. A flower in bloom, more or less framed through a section of wire fencing, completely captured my attention. I found myself wondering whether real frames might be created from wire to use instead of displaying images such as this in traditional black timber frames. Perhaps, someone reading this who has the necessary skills might like to have a go at doing what I have suggested?

This is an exhibition well worth visiting if you can - to see all the artworks, not just the ones I have shown and/or spoken about here. You would also have an opportunity to pick up some delightful Christmas gifts for friends or family whilst you are there.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

The Dingo’s Noctuary

 Illustrated Verse Novel Book Review : Brian Rope

The Dingo’s Noctuary - an illustrated verse novel : Judith Nangala Crispin

Published by Puncher & Wattmann, 18 November 2025

Hardcover (88 colour plates)

ISBN: 9781923099715

COVER IMAGE: Ascending Being 1 - Martin dreams a barn owl into being, over Mt Jillamatong, on a night of flying saucers and stars.

Lumachrome glass print, chemigram, cliche-verre and drawing. Road-killed Eastern Barn Owl, sand, graphite, wax and ink on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in a geodesic dome.

In 2021 I read that Judith Nangala Crispin was a successful poet and lens-based visual artist working between Yuendumu in Australia’s Northern Territory and regional New South Wales. Her photography was centred on Lumachrome Glass printing, a cameraless method she developed using elements of early photochemistry. She has two published poetry collections. Her visual art has been exhibited and published internationally.

Prior to that, Crispin also had a stellar academic career in music, winning international prizes for composition, and teaching internationally. Much of her writing is centred around the experience of searching for her Bpangerang ancestry.

Her new novel, The Dingo’s Noctuary, explores themes of identity, belonging, and the fragile threads that connect all living beings. “At the heart of the tale is a soul’s dark night, the flight of a lady motorcyclist, in the prime of her invisibility, and her mongrel Lajamanu dingo Moon (found alone in the desert at four weeks old and infested with mange), into the Tanami desert. She’s searching for a caravan of miraculous dog-headed beings, glimpsed in dreams and the dementia tales of an old desert lady.”

It was written over thirty-seven desert crossings, sometimes on the motorcycle with the dog on the back. The entire second half of the book was written on a typewriter after a motorcycle crash (the unsuccessful 37th crossing) left Crispin unable to use a computer.

Warlpiri jarntu/warnapari, dingo-dog, wild born on Warlpiri lands,

Kirndangi Jampijinpa, or “Moon”, on the motorcycle pillion (in K9 moto-cockpit)

 

Work from The Dingo’s Noctuary has already received prizes, including the 2023 Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the 2020 Blake Prize for Poetry. Images and texts from the book were included in a Lunar Codex time-capsule which was deposited on the moon in 2024.

The list of Contents indicates there will be 43 Noctuary entries, interspersed with 10 Visions and 2 poems on a Murder at Wave Hill. All are set within three sections – Wormwood (which explains this is not a fairy story), Abyss of the Birds and Astreides.

There are many quotes throughout this book. An early one – in the First Noctuary (journal) Entry – sets a wonderful scenario for anyone investigating their family connections: “There are spider-strings”, she told me. In a strange arachnid lisp, “connecting us to everyone we’ve ever loved.” The author proceeds to tell us “When the lie unravels it takes your breath away.” The entry closes by telling us the journal will be a Noctuary, a record of things passing by night. Now we know what we have commenced reading – hopefully exploring the contents.

Ascending Being 18 - All the dead night spiders, flying around in new bodies, over a bioluminescent sea.

 

Lumachrome glass print and chemigram. Eight dead huntsman spiders with copper chloride and acid on fibre paper. Exposed 24 hours with electric current.

The story unfolds through combinations of poetry and prose, alongside beautiful visual images - accurate hand drawn maps of the Australian central deserts, numerous pressings of rare plants, and forty-seven of the artist’s extraordinary lumachrome glass print creations, afterlife portraits of animals and birds, which many have already enjoyed in galleries, or her social media and website.

Cassini - Star Map 1

Ascending Being 5 -  After the highway, the lights, the cool dark wind that moved him, Murat, somewhere in that gigantic night, discovered a door.

Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram. Road-killed Quokka, with ochre, wax, vegemite, pollen, bark, seeds and sand. Exposed 2 hours in WA, 26 hours in NSW in a perspex box.

 

Land Map 2 (Duck Ponds to Newmont Mine)

 

Ascending Being 23  - Mother lost to trucks, it was cold, and the night raining stars. Henry left the

highway, following songlines across the great dividing range, to the sky country of kangaroos.

Lumachrome glass print, chemigram. Frozen newborn joey on fibre paper, 36 hours in very cold conditions, mist and winter light.

All of this sets the pace of reading, causes us to pause, reread, review, consider the words or image or both – before resuming, continuing to absorb the story, recalling what we have previously read or heard about major events such as the Wave Hill walk-off. Sometimes a few dots or dashes - or a dividing line between sections of the story - cause us to review what we have just explored or to ask ourselves what else might have been included there. This is all good - pausing and contemplating should ensure we read meanings, not just words.

Pressed Plant 7 (Bats Wing Coral Tree, Erythrina Vespertilio)

Ascending Being 39 - Lily returns to Altair, the brightest of Aquila’s stars, wearing the body of a crow.

Lumachrome glass print, cliché-verre. Roadkill crow, ochres & dandelion seeds on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in autumn light under brushed perspex.

 

Following the final journal entry, there is additional material - more pressed plant images, a list of desert birds, and chapter notes. The enormous task is completed - assembled comprehensively into a superb volume.

A longer version of this review, plus information about a way to support the community that supported her whilst she was writing the book, is available on the author’s blog here and in the December 25 issue of The Printer (pp 16-22) here.