CHASING THE LIGHT

I’m looking at a photo of a garden in central New South Wales. I’m there. The sun is setting behind me. My eyes dart from the eucalypt-forested hill in the background, down through the blue and purple zigzag of perennials to the yellow and blurred grasses in the foreground, while a constellation of stars or snow or … what are those exploding insect things in the sky glinting at me? I don’t know, but they are delightful and golden and I can feel the cool night air coming. I want it all, so I drink with my eyes and gulp my tea and stare, and before I know it I’m chanting the Jack Kerouac quote buried somewhere in the notfront part of my brain about how the only people for him are the mad ones, ‘the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.’

Words Annabelle Hickson Photographs Claire Takacs, Thomas Gooch Gardens Hillandale, Yetholme, NSW; The Garden Vineyard, Moorooduc, Victoria; Claire photographing the garden at Great Dixter, East Sussex, England; Cloudehill, Olinda, Victoria.

What I am trying to say is that you can be sitting on a once-white sofa in your tracksuit pants in front of the computer on a Tuesday afternoon and this is what a photograph by Claire Takacs can do to you.

Claire is an Australian photographer at the top of her game. She takes remarkable photos of remarkable gardens all over the world; from Piet Oudolf’s naturalistic Netherlands dream at Hummelo, to Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter and Dan Pearson’s Lowther Castle in the United Kingdom, or the new masterpiece of Windcliff in the United States. She has published two books and is now working with Noel Kingsbury—in my view the greatest writer about contemporary naturalistic garden design—on a new book to be released in 2021.

Claire didn’t start taking photos seriously until she enrolled in a two-year photography course in Melbourne when she was 26. She had always liked art, especially landscape painting, but she didn’t consider herself to be creative. After an environmental science degree which she ‘completed after four quite miserable years,’ she bought a one-way ticket to Europe and spent a few years there, working to travel, before coming home, ready to commit to a career. A walk on the Sorrento beach, involving a rainbow and a sunset, helped her realise she wanted to take photos. And so she went to photography school.

‘The photography course cost a fortune and in no way held up to its promises, but it did teach me about light,’ says Claire. ‘Part of the course was a landscape assignment which led me to Cloudehill, Jeremy Francis’s beautiful garden in Olinda [Victoria]. It reminded me of the grand gardens I had seen in Europe, so I asked Jeremy if I could photograph it.’

Jeremy agreed, and from that morning on, Claire was hooked. Jumping fences in the predawn mist with a tripod and camera was to be her metier.

‘There was a definite moment of magic that morning, watching the light start to highlight the tops of the trees and move through the garden. My job was to watch it and chase it, capturing the garden in the most beautiful way I could, with the help of light. I had sensed then, and I still do now, that gardens are living works of art that change day by day, moment by moment,’ says Claire.

‘It wasn’t really a conscious decision to become a garden photographer. It was more of a feeling and then a relentless determination to make it happen. I had found something, finally, which I felt passionate about. I gave everything to make this happen.’

For much of the past 15 years, Claire has had no fixed address. She travels the globe to photograph gardens at their peak, one month here, one month there. It sounds glamourous, but behind the gorgeous photos is a lot of hard work. Claire has amassed a significant body of work, a keen appreciation for garden design and, thanks to her time with Noel, a growing knowledge of plants. Ansel Adams said you bring to the act of photography all the pictures you’ve seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. Claire’s photos are so much more than clicks of a button.

‘The great joy in what I do comes from a place of complete presence. When I am in a garden and the light is good, I seem to get into a flow state. In the beginning it felt like a kind of magic. But now I know it’s about being completely present in a space where thoughts subside. I can just be and create and it’s often just me and the garden, which is how I like it most. Nature, beauty and light are guiding forces.’

Claire speaks with gratitude about the work she does and the connections she makes, but she also touches on the difficulties of her career.

‘It has been a long and solitary road. My social life has definitely taken a back seat. I have often given my work all of me, which I now realise is not right. I am never bored, but there needs to be balance and rest.

‘Financially, for many years it was hard to survive. And a frustration I still face today is that people seem to love my photography, they need it and want to publish it, but don’t want to pay for it. There is a constant flow of questions and requests from people for advice and my time for free. I don’t have a lot of free time as it is, so I find this challenging.’

Before COVID put an end to most of her travel plans for this year, Claire had hoped to visit the Tokachi Millennium Forest in Hokkaido, to photograph the park commissioned by entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi to offset the carbon footprint of his national newspaper business and to offer Japan’s mainly urban population the chance to engage with the landscape, forest, gardens and farms.

In a reverse way, Claire’s photos have let me engage with landscapes and gardens and farms, without having to fly the miles to see them. A virtual Tokachi experience with no offsets required. Her photos have given me an opportunity to channel Jack Kerouac and most importantly they’ve given me the drive to build a garden for myself.

So while I cut back my perennials, Claire is living in the UK, working on her book project with Noel, planning trips for when the world reopens and she is free to chase the light that explodes like so many spiders across the stars. n