Photography over adversity

By Jessica Carrascalao Heard

“You are stealing people’s souls.”

That’s the accusation a passer-by levelled at photographer and PSC student Susan Brunialti when she first tried her hand at street photography.

The former accountant was approached while crouching low on the concourse at Docklands outside Southern Cross Station, trying to capture reflections in puddles.

The encounter left her devastated and she packed up her camera and headed for home.

Susan’s now a skilled street photographer and laughs at the recollection.

“Can you imagine? One of the first times I head out to do street, I get that encounter,” she said.

Although her street photography has won awards and been published in the prestigious Capture Magazine, this genre was not always her first choice.

She had initially bought her DSLR to photograph her son when he was first born. But in 2012, when he was just 15 months old, Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was this diagnosis that was the catalyst for her to take more serious steps into photography.

At the end of a year of chemotherapy and multiple surgeries, Susan and her family travelled and after seeing her photos from the trip on social media, family and friends encouraged her to take up photography.

It was a conversation with a stranger at her local coffee shop in 2014 that prompted her to join the Melbourne Camera Club, where she now serves on the board and is the exhibition co-ordinator.

“I went along and it was a print competition night … four walls, in fact, of amazing photography. And I was blown away and I thought, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do’,” she said.

It wasn’t long before the awards started to come through.

“After six months being at the Melbourne Camera Club in the end-of-year competition … I took out the ‘Best Image for a Novice’,” she said.

She said it was when she was promoted from novice to B-Grade at the club at the start of 2015 that she decided to attend PSC for more structured learning.

“Winning awards at Melbourne Camera Club really validated that not only my family and friends thought my photography was okay, but camera club judges were also thinking that,” she said.

At the end of her first year at PSC in 2015, Susan had a second breast cancer diagnosis.

During that time, she discovered that the act of composing shots and pressing the shutter button helped alleviate her anxiety.

“It was just so amazing to have that experience through photography. That it was actually calming me. So yeah, I guess I realised then that photography was the way forward for me,” she said.

Through her diagnoses Susan gravitated to photographing landscapes and seascapes. But through her studies at PSC, she has come to love street photography.

She’s a big fan of the father of the genre, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and uses his concept of the “decisive moment” in her pictures.

“The decisive moment is important to me because it’s unstaged, it’s not rehearsed,” she said.

She’s not afraid to wait for those moments, either. In one of her winning photos, Susan waited 40 minutes for a passer-by to come along wearing the same colour as a bike she had already framed up in the shot.

“For me, that’s the decisive moment, because that moment won’t happen again if you go today to that same spot. That bike won’t be there. That lady won’t be there,” she said.

It’s important for Susan to tell a story with her images and loves it when viewers discuss and engage with her art.

“That’s what I really love about photography as well. I can take a photo, and someone else can stand back and appreciate it and talk to it,” she said.

Although photography is important to her and she wishes to continue practicing photography into the future, Susan is also enjoying “bringing exhibitions to life”.

She loves the feeling of being immersed in art that an exhibition brings, and wants to share that experience with others.

“Walking into those galleries is just so calming, and is so amazing … you can really just get lost in photography,” she said.

For those aspiring to try street photography, Susan has some advice.

“Try and mix in with the crowd. And if someone has any issue with you, like one lady did, listen to what they have to say and walk to a different spot,” she said.