Where Creativity Has No Gatekeepers
About me
I’m Des Crossley — a photographer, artist, and maker of ideas that cross boundaries. My work explores themes of memory, absence, and human connection, often through experimental and conceptual photography. Whether it’s creating images with vintage cameras, refracting light into portraits, or reimagining still life, I’m drawn to stories that linger in what’s left behind.
Beyond photography, I’ve spent decades building and running a specialist manufacturing business that serves a global niche market. That experience has shaped how I think: detail matters, but so does vision. The same discipline that keeps a production line running also drives my creative process — balancing precision with curiosity.
I also believe in community. From contributing to camera clubs to helping revitalise small-town spaces, I look for ways to make art, ideas, and experiences more open and accessible. That’s the spirit behind Open Gate Gallery — a space without barriers, where creativity belongs to everyone.
This site is a window into my projects, past and present — a mix of art, photography, and ideas in motion.
Some recent work
Exhibition - 'Marks of Absence'
Marks of Absence is an eight-panel series photographed at Auschwitz using a Leica IIIC – a camera from the Holocaust era, connected to the story of Ernst Leitz and the ‘Leica Freedom Train’ that helped Jews escape Nazi Germany.
Each photograph is rendered in halftone, comprising 750,000 dots—six million across the series—to symbolise each life lost. These dots form both the visual texture and conceptual weight of the work.
Marks of Absence bridges history and the present, asking viewers not only to remember, but to reflect on what endures and what still demands change.
The Leica’s worn shutter curtain left small holes in the images. These marks, preserved rather than corrected, represent the voids that remain in humanity: empathy, justice, and memory. Despite eighty years, we have yet to fully learn from this dark chapter.
Currently on display as part of the 2025 Ballarat Foto Biennale. https://ballaratfoto.org/
Exhibition at Eureka Centre Ballarat.
https://eurekacentreballarat.com.au/events/marks-of-absence-photographs-by-des-crossley/
Current Project - 'It's Still Life'
Artist Statement — It’s Still Life
In It’s Still Life, I explore the fragility of existence and the boundaries between reality and illusion through stripped-back, monochromatic still life photography. By removing the distraction of colour—what I see as visual noise—I invite the viewer to engage with form, shadow, texture, and symbolism. The absence of vibrancy draws focus to presence, absence, and what remains when life’s surface is peeled away.
Each object—a plastic fruit, a dying flower, a familiar shape rendered unfamiliar—challenges perceptions of what is real and what is not. These still life scenes are not just compositions of objects; they are metaphors for our roles in society, in memory, and ultimately, in death. Are we authentic or simply representations? Do we leave behind more than a silhouette or an echo?
The artificial fruit and broken flowers speak of impermanence, deception, and the tension between preservation and decay. This work reflects on how we inhabit the world—how we are seen, remembered, or forgotten. Even in death, we remain part of a composition. We are still here. It’s still life.
Current Project - Escaping Reality (Digital Pinhole)
A pinhole camera series capturing everyday life as blurred, distorted, and uncertain. Streets, homes, and figures dissolve into dreamlike visions. The work reflects our unstable grasp on truth in a post-truth world, where even the most ordinary scenes become uncanny and reality itself is in question.
Current Project - Disposable Moments
A series created on Instax film in the style of old trading cards. It reflects on our disposable culture, where both objects and memories are fleeting. Even lives are often remembered through only a few keepsakes. These small, fragile prints ask: what is worth preserving, and what is discarded?
Over the Threshold
Over the Threshold transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary by reducing the image to the pure extremes of black and white. Colour is stripped away, and with it the distractions of familiarity. What remains are stark contrasts — shapes, shadows, and textures that bring hidden drama to the mundane.
By pushing images across this threshold, from the recognisable world of colour into the heightened realm of monochrome, the work uncovers a vitality often overlooked in daily life. Mundane subjects — walls, windows, objects, streets — become bold graphic statements, suggesting that meaning and beauty can exist in even the most unremarkable places.
This series challenges viewers to reconsider how they see the world. When everything is pared back to light and dark, we cross a threshold where the banal is reimagined, and the overlooked takes on a new presence.
