I went for a long stroll in Paddington which is one of the most charming areas in Sydney. It has retained its old victorian terraces and colonial looking houses. Narrow streets and big trees, it feels like a village in the city.

I finished my exploration at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery which has been the subject of many of my contemplations throughout the years.

My favourite photographer of all time is Bill Henson, an australian artist I came accross randomly on my last trip, 11 years ago, while in a small art gallery in Tasmania. His historical gallery is Roslyn Oxley9. He has since had a big retrospective at the NSW Art Gallery and worldwide acclaim but his work has almost never been showed in a big way in Europe or the US – I mean in a museum. He has another gallery in New York and another one in Switzerland, but he’s not represented in Paris at all.

Roslyn’s website still holds the most comprehensive collection of his work and I’ve spent countless hours browsing through these fascinating images. I cannot express how much I love this work and it’s safe to say that due to my over-exposition to photography for the last few years I have become a very difficult audience. These are incredibly mysterious, deep, timeless; they move me profoundly.

A couple of years ago I contacted the gallery to enquire about the price of the photographs. One of my very few materialistic dreams is to purchase one of them. They were expensive at the time but as I entered the gallery today and looked at  the catalog I found out that prices had raised again. I wish I had bought some work 10 years ago!  (Well, I never would have, I was so broke!!)

As the conversation went on about some of his past work (my favourites are from 1983-1990), the lovely gallery staff took me to the back office to show me some of his archives. I felt a child-like excitement that I clumsily tried to conceal…

So I saw for the first time some of his triptych / diptych from 1983 which I worship and only ever had seen on a computer screen… I was blown away.

The irony is that his pictures cost around AUS$ 30 000 each (editions of 10 / 76 x 63 cm) (note to self) and my absolute favourites are those who come together as a group of 2 or 3, which obviously means that this tryptich above is AUS$ 90 000. Hum… Not gonna be able to afford that just yet. Not yet.

Then they took out some of his Lux & Now serie for me which is probably his most famous work. They are all around AUS$ 30 000 (editions of 5 + 2 AP/ 128 x 180 cm) apart from what I call the “American” serie which are these and only cost AUS$ 12 000 (editions of 20/ 128 x 100 cm)

I had been looking forward to finally setting foot in this beautiful gallery but having been shown these works was unexpected. Next time I will be purchasing one of these.