Pamela Pauline

The art of bearing witness

Stillness

Pamela Pauline has lived in eight countries on five continents, but it was Australia, its banksias and waratahs, its cockatoos and grass trees, that finally stopped her in her tracks. Working from her studio in Mona Vale, she creates large-scale photographic compositions she calls Living Still Lifes: images assembled from hundreds of photographs of native species, nearly all encountered alive in the field, that together build a portrait of a natural world of extraordinary beauty and increasing fragility. Her new artbook, Where the Wild Things Grow, explores the philosophy behind the work. We spoke with Pamela about witnessing, waiting, and what AI can never replicate.

The Usual Suspects

Pamela Pauline arrived in Australia from elsewhere, and she is clear that this matters. “Perhaps it was precisely because I came to Australia from elsewhere that I saw its natural world with such intensity,” she says. “Australia felt unlike anywhere I had known.” The banksias and waratahs were genuinely exotic to her eye. The cockatoos were extraordinary. Over time, that first sense of wonder has deepened into something more complex, a growing awareness of how many of the species she photographs are threatened, and how fragile the relationships between them can be. “That tension between extraordinary beauty and vulnerability has become central to my work.”

A little life

Pamela Pauline’s artbook Where the Wild Things Grow is available at pamelapauline.com. Her studio in Mona Vale is open by appointment.

@pamelapaulineart.