Push Ups Go Ed. 7 of 10

The most popular image from the MANIFEST DESTINY exhibition at this year's Adelaide Festival. 3 framea remaining in the edition at 1.5m x 1m.

A colour negative film image of a scene caught at Venice Beach, California. The image is a part of a series of photos depicting the mythical city of angels.

'First impressions are often the ones that stand ready to be subverted, undermined. I'd
arrived in the city of Lost Angels. The city of moguls, of dreamers, drifters and grifters,
of hope and renewal. Where stars shone brightly and were prone to burn those who got
too close to the secrets, the secrets deep down that revealed themselves occasionally
and violently. The Black Dahlia, Orienthal J Simpson. The Night Stalker. The Viper Room.
Florence and Normandy. Crips and Bloods.

The man doing push ups in the sparkling sun at Venice Beach looked powerful and
confident, the way America was before the darkness came. This was where the journey
begun, in California, where people could find their fortune, where silicon valley had
changed the universe and where a 5ft 2 musician named Charles Manson ordered a
bunch of demented middle-class hippies to the houses of Tate and LaBianca. "

Follow

Alex Frayne has been involved in film and images from his earliest school days. Beginning with an 8mm camera in hand he has continued his love affair with visual media ever since. His stills photography work has earned acclaim and his work is held in galleries including the National Portrait Gallery (two images in the Permanent Collection).

He shoots mainly analogue film formats, including 6x6cm, 6x9cm and 35mm formats. In 2023 his performance MUSIC FOR OTHER WORLDS had its world premiere at the prestigious Adelaide
Festival of Arts, featuring the esteemed pianist Paul Grabowsky responding in real time to a series of his photographs projected.

In 2026 his American Photographic Essay MANIFEST DESTINY premiered at the Adelaide Festival Of Arts to huge acclaim. Rosemary Neil writing for The Australian proclaimed it "the best photographic exhibition I have seen in years."

He has four art books published by Wakefield Press. Simon Caterson, for The Australian, writes: "the last book confirms that Frayne deserves to be thought of alongside Ansel Adams and the other great landscape photographers.' (Landscapes of South Australia, Wakefield Press, 2020).

BOOKS (all published by WAKEFIELD PRESS, ADELAIDE)

-Adelaide Noir, 86pg, 2015
-Theatre of Life, Portraits - 80pg, 2017
-Landscapes of South Australia, 216 pg, 2020 (3 print runs)
-Distance and Desire, 216 pg 2024