There is no doubt about it.... Magnum sure knows how to pick them...I am simply in awe of the recent work by David Alan Harvey that is on display at The Australian Centre for Photography as part of the ubiquitous Head On Photo Festival currently underway in Sydney. The last time I have seen any photography that has affected me like this was when Trent Parke's opus 'Minutes to Midnight' was on display in the same space. Something that is perhaps not so surprising as I believe that Parke and Harvey share something of the same values...Without wanting to sound like one of the many emerging photographers that Harvey mentors world wide I stood before the photograph 'Nightswim' and was simply dumbstruck by its brilliance....I found I breathed the same air of that darkened humid coast and pondered the relationship of the people that were mere specks on the horizon. I felt that the revelation of what was exposed in that mere split second that it takes to frame and adjust a photograph was overwhelming with its implications...from the resonances of the uncertainty yet feeling of impending joy of my teenage years, through to my sadnesses and losses of my mature years it revealed itself to me like a Herman Hesse novel. Not complex language, but with each single visual cue amalgamating to create such emotion... raw, passionate and real...Rothko's work has always had the same affect on me...A search for spiritual meaning rooted firmly to the ground of physical being...The rest of the Harvey's work was classic Harvey... with the complex intertwining of people and elements and perfect compositions...the people in the foreground, mid ground and background each doing their own thing yet somehow falling under the gaze of the one ever discerning familial head's eye...But thats what happens in a Harvey photograph... everyone becomes part of his complex family of humanity with their own paths and relationships...their divergences and their cohesions...the pictures are a fine metaphor for what he has created in real life with the magazine Burn and all of the characters that has unleashed...Perhaps though the greatest sign of a real master comes from his smaller prints on the back wall of the gallery...I am not sure whether they are galley proofs for a book but for me it showed that Harvey struggles with his art as much as any newbie photographer trying to figure out the formal elements of composition and to hit the button at the right time... That struggle has a great humility about it...to know such a reknown artist still has to push at the boundaries to take it to 'the next step' gives me real faith in the future of photography...and an insight into the mind of a man who seems to be able to see it all at the moment it burns...DAVID ALAN HARVEY...Based on a True Story at The Australian Centre for Photography...Absolutely not to be missed!