Have camera, will climb: reaching the photographic heights of exploration
For decades Simon Carter has quietly carved out a reputation as one of Australia’s great explorers.
For decades, Simon Carter has been quietly chipping away from his early days in Canberra, on to a sabbatical in The Pines at Mount Arapiles in western Victoria and now his Blue Mountains base to build a reputation as one of the great photographic explorers.
His subject matter is rock climbing, a sometimes extreme pursuit that attracts risk takers, environmentalists and the adventurous, often in equal measure.
To the untrained eye, it can be hard to make sense of climbing, which often takes the practitioner close to the edge.
A key part of Carter’s role is explaining the climbing environment to a wide audience.
Carter, 57, has taken his camera, ropes and various apparatus with him to hang off cliff faces to capture iconic images, adding his own style that has attracted global recognition.
An understated person, Carter nonetheless has many achievements including being named by Men’s Journal Magazine (USA) as one of the world’s best adventure photographers and described by the editor of Rock and Ice Magazine (USA) as arguably the greatest climbing photographer of all time.
It was 30 years ago at Mount Arapiles in western Victoria – considered one of Australia’s best climbing locations and now under threat of heritage shutdowns – that a young Carter was photographing fellow climbers and had an epiphany that he could combine climbing and his interest in photography.
“I lived the dream just to go climbing,’’ he said. “That’s where I had my aha moment.’’
Exactly 30 years later, Carter’s photography has been showcased in a new book, The Art of Climbing, produced by Thames & Hudson, which will be available to a global audience.
Carter has devoted his life to capturing the exceptional, from climbers above cloud inversions in the Blue Mountains to Utah, Madagascar, Spain and various locations in Australia, including the Grampians, Arapiles and Flinders Ranges.
He has scaled the photographic heights, despite Australia often lacking the kind of dramatic peaks seen in Europe and other continents and because he has kept to a steady formula of keeping things real.
If someone is grinding through a 250m high multi-pitch, then Carter finds himself a few metres higher to capture the scene. That’s real enough.
The great Czech climber Adam Ondra describes in the foreword to the Art of Climbing part of the key to Carter’s success.
“There aren’t many sports in the world that lead people to places as incredible as those encountered through climbing,’’ Ondra writes.
“Walls, cliffs, overhangs and peculiar formations can be found almost anywhere on earth and every rock is specific and unique, offering particular climbing.
“Who knew landscapes around rocks could be so diverse.”
Carter is one of many high-profile climbers pushing back against the drift in Australia towards shutting down access to significant areas using the explanation of cultural heritage with limited transparency.
But the book is not about this controversy; it’s more a celebration of a life’s work that really started, in a business sense, with a climbing calendar produced in 1995 that helped fund his first overseas trips.
Of the book, Carter says simply: “It basically is my life’s work. It’s my magnum opus.’’
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