Southeastern

Southeastern reimagines Queensland as a vessel for transformation. Within it, five Brisbane lives unfold, each marked by reinvention, by the courage to change, by the quiet power of becoming. Cameron shapes the body through discipline and endurance. Ayik, once a South Sudanese child soldier, rebuilds belonging within his family and a new land. Lauren, a trans woman, finds beauty through honesty and becoming. Andrew dissolves and reforms through the layered fictions of cosplay. Jim, after illness, discovers renewal through faith.

The work reflects on the body and spirit’s boundless capacity to transform, to alter, to heal, to transcend. In these gestures of change, no act is small, each carries its own quiet profundity. Created in collaboration with cinematographers Ethan Bourke and Brodie Poole, Southeastern pairs each subject with a visual language attuned to their inner world. Each portrait moves gently, a living photograph, textured with light, stillness, and deified reverence.

Through tender observation, Southeastern honours transformation as an act of self-creation, restoring agency and grace to lives too often framed by others.