Peter Elfes

T h e A r r i v a l
t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
Pe t e r E l f e s

w w w . p e t e r e l f e s p h o t o g r a p h y . c o m

e Lake Eyre Series is dedicated to the late, great Peter Carrette
(1947-2010)

e Lake Eyre Series
e Arrival is a project that documents my journey across
Lake Eyre and the Tirari Desert in South Australia. It
features aerial images that capture the abstract beauty of the
Australian outback with the arrival of water into the Lake
Eyre basin.
I was drawn to the desert when I rst heard about water
entering the Lake Eyre basin. I wanted to document the
transformation that occurs in this stark and arid land,
from the barren landscape of an ancient world, into the brilliantly colourful oasis
it becomes with the arrival of water. e Arrival is a photo essay of my journeys
through Lake Eyre and the Tirari Desert. In this photographic series, I attempt
to illustrate the signicance of a major climatic event that denes and shapes the
beauty of Australia’s landscape.
During my time around Lake Eyre (Kati-thandra), the Aboriginal people inspired
me to see the land from a dierent perspective. I was motivated to document their
land with a greater understanding and appreciation of its cultural and spiritual
importance to the Arabunna people. e Arabunna people do not think in terms
of boundaries, there is in fact no such word in their language, the land where their
territory ends and other peoples’ begin is mostly gradual.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the region that is presently
referred to as Lake Eyre*, the Arabunna people, and thank them for their generosity
and support especially Aaron Stuart, the Chairperson of the Ularaka Arabunna
Association in South Australia.
e Arrival features 40 unique images. is limited edition series is printed on
museum grade cotton paper, using the world’s most advanced printing processes
and archival pigments.
I would also like to thank Warren Macris for his passionate commitment and
attention to detail in the production of this spectacular collection of ne art prints.
e Giclée Australia Edition of e Arrival: e Lake Eyre Series.
Peter Elfes
Creative Producer, e Arrival
* e Arabunna word for a large body of water is Pantu Parnda (the vast salt lake/the huge lake). is is not be confused with
the name place ‘Kati-thandra’, which is the name given to the specic area presently known as Lake Eyre.

Aaron Stuart - Chair of the Ularaka Arabunna Assoc.
To the Arabunna people, Kati-thandra (Lake Eyre) is
an extremely important place, to us it’s the heart of the
desert. All its creeks, estuaries and mound springs are like
maps for our dreaming stories. e Arabunna people and
other Aboriginal tribes have lived around Kati-thandra
for thousands of years. Kati-thandra has inspired many
dreaming stories, one of which tells of a ghostly white
being Warrenar, that emerged from the waters of the lake.
To the Arabunna people, Warrenar is the spiritual keeper of the lake.
e story of how Kati-thandra was formed comes from the west around the sink
holes and crystal caves of the Nullabor Plains. It has travelled along the Balta
Baltana creek across the Stuart Range and past Peak Station. e story has been told
by the desert Aboriginal groups over thousands of years. It tells of a kangaroo that
was frightened by a boy who gave chase. e kangaroo gained pace but eventually
it was chased down by the boy and killed with a spear he had found on the sand.
e boy, tired from the chase, decided to sleep before he cooked the animal.
When he woke some time later, he noticed that the kangaroo he caught was gone.
He followed the tracks until he saw an old man cooking his prey in the distance.
During his pursuit, spirits told the boy that this animal had a magic skin and would
create a lake when placed on the sand. He hurried towards the old man and told
him he could eat the meat but must hand back the skin.
e old man gave the skin back to him and he hurried back towards the east with
the skin in his grass bag. He was joined by a strange bird that ew close to him. e
little bird chattered rmly that he was not to throw the skin over important human
tracks and nally gave him permission to spread the skin over a at, dry stretch of
desert. e skin grew larger and larger while water rapidly owed into it from some
magic source. is is now Kati-thandra (Lake Eyre).
e Arabunna people believe the boy was turned into stone on the bank of the lake
he made for them. ey say he still remains there today and the rock resembles the
young boy with his grass bag containing the skin and his stone spear. Quite close to
him is another rock formation resembling a kangaroo.
Lake Eyre (Kati-thandra) and its catchment is part of an ancient inland sea
one-sixth the size of the Australian continent. e environmental and cultural
signicance of this part of Australia is beyond dispute.
e Arabunna people are the custodians of this version of the dreaming story about
the creation of Kati-thandra (Lake Eyre).
e kangaroo dreaming story about how Kati-thandra was formed has been reproduced with the kind permission of the
Arabunna people of South Australia.

Photo Artist
Peter Elfes was born in Sydney and grew up in the inner
city suburb of Darlinghurst where his father owned
a photography studio. He has been a professional
photographer for over thirty years, often inuenced and
inspired by his father, a photojournalist born in Greece.
Peter studied photography at Sydney’s Institute of
Technology, completing a Diploma of Photography in the
late 1970s. In 1981 he began work at Freeman Studio in Sydney, the second oldest
photographic studio in the world, still running today. He was the manager there for
10 years.
Peter then travelled to the United States, spending a year in the stimulating
and exciting cultural environment of New York. is was a pivotal time in his
development as a photographer. Upon his return to Sydney in 1991, Peter began
working as a freelance photographer and became the chief photographer for the
Sydney Star Observer. He was also appointed as the ocial photographer for the
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Association, a position he held for eight years.
Peter’s early work was a collaboration with many artists and costume designers
which brought his creativity and artistic talents to the attention of curators and
publishers nationally. As a result, his works are in private and public collections in
Australia and overseas including the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse
Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art. His work can also be seen in
many publications, including books produced by the above institutions, and has
recently been featured by Australian Geographic.

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
The Tree II

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
CROCODILE HILLS
DESERT & WATER I
CRYSTAL COAST

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
DESERT & WATER II
EARTH’S VEINS I
DESERT & WATER III

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
EARTH’S VEINS II
SKELETON DESERT
THE FENCE

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
THE SHORE I
THE TREE I
THE TREE II

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
Shadowlands II

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
A PAUSE IN TIME
CRACKED EARTH
DESERT AURORA
DESERT ISLANDS

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
DESERT MOSAIC
DESERT & WATER IV
GREEN DESERT I
GREEN DESERT II

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
GREEN LAKE
JURASSIC COAST
MARBLED DESERT
HERMIT HILLS

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
MARREE BUNGLES I
MARREE BUNGLES II
PLATEAU
REFLECTIONS I (PANORAMA)

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
REFLECTIONS II
REFLECTIONS III (PANORAMA)
SHADOWLANDS I
SHADOWLANDS II

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
THE BIRDSVILLE TRACK
THE ILLUSION PLAINS
THE ISLAND
THE PAINTED HILLS

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
THE SHORE II
THE TREE III
WHERE HEAVEN MEETS EARTH
THE STATION

T h e A r r i v a l | t h e l a k e e y r e s e r i e s
Crystal Coast

Giclée (pronounced “jhee-clay”) was coined in 1991
by Jack Duganne to represent any inkjet-based digital
print used as ne art. e intent of that name was
to distinguish commonly known industrial “Iris
proofs” from the type of ne art prints artists were
producing on those same types of printers. e name
was originally applied to ne art prints created on Iris
printers in a process invented in the early 1990s, it has
since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and
is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such
prints.
Graham Nash and the birth of digital ne art printing
e photographic side of the Giclée printing equation didn’t eventuate until the
paths of six people; a rock star and his best friend, an art publicist, a sales rep, a
computer wizard, and a silkscreen printer unexpectedly intersected in early 1989
in California. Rock musician Graham Nash (of the legendary group Crosby, Stills,
and Nash) had been quietly collecting photographs for years. In the process, Nash
amassed a world-class collection of vintage and contemporary photographs.
In 1996, Sydney based printer/photographer Warren Macris was ready to embrace
this new printing technology. e next stage in the history of Giclèe printing was
the release of the Roland HiFi Jet printers, these had the quality of the Iris printers
but with a leap in archival properties. Warren became the rst photo/art printer
in Australia to make this technology commercially available. Warren has since
grown his business to provide for the needs of photographers, artists, galleries and
museums around the world.
Now the word Giclée has come to be associated with prints that use fade-resistant,
archival inks, archival substrates (paper or canvas) and the inkjet printers that use
them. Since then, the Giclée process has been accepted the world over as the most
technologically advanced and archival digital printing process, and the world’s
professional photographers and artists are using this process as the museum standard
for the production of ne art.
According to Les Walkling “Giclèe printing has added zeros to the estimated
longevity of photographic art prints that are now being created using this modern
procedure”. Les Walkling was formerly the Media and Arts program director at
RMIT. Les is now one of Australia’s leading colour print educators.

Warren has always loved printing, he began processing
and printing B&W in 1974 as a 15 year old and then
colour in 1976. He has been a photographer and
printer his whole life and began the move to a fully
digital workow in 1996. “Traditional darkroom
printing oers a fair range of techniques and processes
to rene the print. With today’s mix of art papers,
printer software and inks, the ability to rene the print
even more is oered”.
“I particularly love that the whole process is in a
never ending upward spiral, oering prints of great
beauty. I feel my techniques have improved more in the last year than in any
of my previous 30 years of professional printing and I will do my best for that
progress to continue”.
Warren has been an integral part of the transition to today’s digital printing
workow. For Warren, the transition has been challenging but extremely interesting
and rewarding.
“I think in the area of colour that we have jumped signicantly past
traditional chemical based options (C-type etc), most notably in the areas of
paper choices –ne art papers etc and archival aspects. Anyone looking at the
gures coming out from Aardenburg Imaging* must seriously question using
C-type for ne art printing”.
At the beginning of 2009, Warren became Epson’s “Print Partner” for Australia.
Epson now rely on Giclèe Australia to prepare and produce prints for many of the
major exhibitions that they sponsor around the country.
* Aardenburg Imaging conducts image permanence research on photographic materials.

Warren has always loved printing, he began processing
and printing B&W in 1974 as a 15 year old and then
colour in 1976. He has been a photographer and
printer his whole life and began the move to a fully
digital workow in 1996. “Traditional darkroom
printing oers a fair range of techniques and processes
to rene the print. With today’s mix of art papers,
printer software and inks, the ability to rene the print
even more is oered”.
“I particularly love that the whole process is in a
never ending upward spiral, oering prints of great
beauty. I feel my techniques have improved more in the last year than in any
of my previous 30 years of professional printing and I will do my best for that
progress to continue”.
Warren has been an integral part of the transition to today’s digital printing
workow. For Warren, the transition has been challenging but extremely interesting
and rewarding.
“I think in the area of colour that we have jumped signicantly past
traditional chemical based options (C-type etc), most notably in the areas of
paper choices –ne art papers etc and archival aspects. Anyone looking at the
gures coming out from Aardenburg Imaging* must seriously question using
C-type for ne art printing”.
At the beginning of 2009, Warren became Epson’s “Print Partner” for Australia.
Epson now rely on Giclèe Australia to prepare and produce prints for many of the
major exhibitions that they sponsor around the country.
* Aardenburg Imaging conducts image permanence research on photographic materials.

WINKEL GALLERIES
3 1 7 C l o v e l l y R o a d , C l o v e l l y, N S W, 2 0 3 1
P h o n e 6 1 2 9 6 6 4 4 3 5 3
panna@winkelgalleries.com
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