Look at Infinite mile #13 long enough, and something strange happens. You lose the bird.
It is there. Zorica Purlija found it dead on a beach at Catherine Hill Bay during her 2024 residency. She photographed it with an antique Argus 75 camera, using expired film stock, accepting whatever the materials gave her. The bird does not declare itself. It lies within the same tonal field as sand and water, its edges softened into the surface, its presence absorbed. The eye searches for confirmation. The image refuses. What appears never fully holds. In 2025, the image was shortlisted for the Bowness Photography Prize.
This is not aesthetic preference. It is a philosophical position—one that quietly structures Purlija’s practice.
She does not photograph subjects. She photographs instability itself: subjects that act as perceptual anchors but never fully secure what they show. “All those mistakes add to the ethereal nature of the image,” she says. “I welcome it.” Grain thickens. Light leaks. Tonal relationships shift. She does not correct these effects. She lets them remain because they reveal something true: the camera was invented to arrest time. Purlija uses it to show time slipping its cuffs.
The scholar Kate Palmer Albers has written about photographs as suspended objects, where uncertainty can operate as a productive condition rather than a limitation. Purlija’s work occupies that space. But she does not resolve uncertainty toward new forms of understanding. She leaves it exposed. The dead bird does not become evidence. The landscape does not cohere. The image does not explain. It suspends. And in that suspension—that refusal to settle—Purlija finds something more fundamental: the photograph does not fail to hold the world; it reveals that it never fully held it to begin with.
She photographs instability itself—subjects that act as perceptual anchors but never fully secure what they show.
It becomes difficult, at this point, to situate Purlija within familiar photographic categories. Her work does not comfortably align with environmental photography, portraiture, or landscape traditions. What emerges instead is a practice attuned to disappearance itself—where the bird is less subject than condition.
The warming waters that kill migratory birds, the erosion of coastlines—none of this is illustrated. It is performed. The bird is present but unstable. The landscape is visible but never secures itself as ground. Disappearance is not depicted. It is enacted by the image. The photograph does not document a loss. It is experienced as loss within perception itself.
It is an unlikely demand to place on a camera. The medium was built on certainty—on the assumption that light could be fixed, that the ephemeral could be made permanent. Purlija inverts that assumption. She uses photography to demonstrate that nothing holds, not even photography itself. That inversion is not a flaw. It is where the work becomes most exact.
Looking for the Body Where It Isn’t
She learned to look this way early. Born in Montenegro and raised in Australia, she arrived in 1972 to racist schoolyards and the urgent need to disappear into English. That dislocation produced something else: a heightened attentiveness to nuance. “It cemented my way of observing subtle nuances in behaviour,” she says, “which gave me a strength in portraiture of looking beyond the surface.”
That training in “looking beyond” never left her. Even when the body disappears from her frames—as it does across two decades of work—she continues to search for it. Not for its outline. For its trace.
Consider Into Silence. The figure appears but never settles into full presence. In one image, a reclining body is seen through a milky veil, as if the surface of the photograph has drifted between viewer and subject. In another, the figure loosens into blur against a vertical wash of light, its contours softened to near-erasure. These are not images that clarify the person before us. They hold her at the edge of legibility, suspended between appearance and withdrawal. The body is not placed within a stable environment. It is absorbed into atmosphere, reflection, and light.
These are not images of immersion, but of interruption. The figure is repeatedly withheld—by haze, blur, and interference across the image plane. Even at its most visible, it does not fully resolve. When the body disappears altogether, giving way to dense branches and tangled growth, the logic remains. The image resists clean separation—between figure and room, between form and thicket.
Then comes Biomorphic, and the body is no longer visible, but its logic persists. What remains are close surfaces—rock, water, mineral textures—seen at a distance where scale becomes uncertain. In one image, a rock face fills the frame, its fissures and folds reading almost as skin. In another, repeating patterns suggest scales or cellular structures, though they never stabilise. Elsewhere, water moves across stone, catching light in a way that breaks the surface into shifting fragments. These are not symbolic substitutions. They are perceptual demands. The image does not depict transformation. It requires it.
What the work demands is not recognition, but adjustment. The eye moves between readings—geological, anatomical, microscopic—without settling. The body has not disappeared so much as been displaced—distributed across these textures, held within them as a distant echo.
What appears, at first, as abstraction begins to read differently. It begins to resemble a form of perceptual reportage—an account not of what is seen, but of seeing under unstable conditions.
When the Body Returns, It Fails
Fade Into You returns the body to the frame, but under altered conditions. The figure is no longer a stable organising centre.
In Fade Into You, the image holds together two incompatible spaces without resolving them. A woman reclines on a sofa, her body stretched across the frame, grounded in the quiet enclosure of a domestic interior. Across her, a second image of bushland—branches, riverbank, drifting foliage—presses into the surface. The body remains unmistakable—its weight, its outline, its stillness—but it is never fully secured. Branches pass across the torso and limbs, breaking the continuity of the form without erasing it. The sofa persists, yet no longer stabilises the scene. Interior and exterior occupy the same plane, neither receding nor yielding. The photograph does not open into depth; it holds at the surface, where one image extends as the other interrupts. What is sustained is not disappearance, but exposure: a body that remains visible while no longer contained by the space it inhabits.
In Deep in Conversation, the image shifts again. Any suggestion of figuration becomes difficult to confirm. The photograph reads first as a dense field of vegetation—branches, leaves, and ground compressed into a shallow, continuous surface. If bodies are present, they are not perceptually available in any stable way. Nothing resolves into a clear figure or relation. The title proposes an exchange, but the image withholds it. There is no gesture, no identifiable interaction, no point of anchoring. Instead, the photograph holds the viewer in a state of searching, where recognition remains partial and inconclusive. What is at stake here is not the dissolution of figures, but the image’s refusal to deliver them.
Interior and exterior occupy the same plane, neither receding nor yielding.
In Golden Moments, the figure returns to clarity. A woman stands within a lightly wooded landscape, her body upright and immediately legible. The space is coherent: grasses, shrubs, and tree forms articulate depth from foreground to background. The figure does not dissolve into the environment, nor is she obscured. Yet the image is not entirely stable. Fine branches and shifting patches of light move across parts of the frame, softening edges and creating moments where body and vegetation visually coincide. This does not produce a separate layer or collapse the space. Instead, it introduces a mild perceptual interference—an image that remains grounded, but gently unsettled by its own conditions of light.
Across the series, the body does not disappear, nor does it fully dominate. It moves between states: veiled, withheld, and clearly present, but never entirely secure as the organising centre of the image. The photographs do not resolve this condition. They sustain it.
Water Does Not Frame – It Erodes
By The Fall (2023), the terms shift decisively. The figure is no longer the central problem of the image. Water is.
In Gushing, a vertical cascade establishes an initial sense of gravity and direction, but that structure does not hold. The flow is broken into adjoining rectangular zones that interrupt its continuity, dividing the waterfall into segments that do not fully align. Human figures remain visible in the pool below, but they do not stabilise the scene. Attention shifts instead to the surface of the photograph—where flow is interrupted, and where the image reveals its own limits.
In Minyon Falls, the disruption is less abrupt but no less significant. Water, mist, and vegetation are held in uneven relation. Space remains legible, but it does not behave continuously. The eye moves across the image without settling, held between recognition and immersion.
In I’ve Got You, this pressure turns intimate. A body lies low within the water, partially illuminated, its form held between exposure and concealment. The waterfall descends nearby, its force present but not theatrical. The figure does not stand against it. It remains within the same field—subject to the same conditions—neither separate from the landscape nor fully absorbed.
Across these works, water no longer frames the world. It interrupts, disperses, and redistributes what can be seen. The photograph does not stabilise space. It holds together elements that resist alignment—flow, density, body, and ground—without resolving them.
Letting the Camera Win
So, This is Goodbye (2024) is the most radical shift in Purlija’s practice. She steps away from constructed image-making.
The series is made during walks along the Central Coast—Maitland Bay, MacMasters Beach—without a fixed agenda. The Argus 75 and its expired film stock are not tools she controls. They operate with their own logic. Colour shifts. Grain thickens. Edges soften. Light leaks interrupt the image. She does not correct any of it.
“There are times I am always with my camera when I am almost willing things to come,” she says. “That’s my intuition. Then I give it up. I am walking aimlessly, sort of lost, then something happens.”
In Seaweed, the image is organised from the shoreline outward. Dense bands of marine growth occupy the lower half of the frame, their direction shaped by the movement of the tide. Beyond, the scene opens into calm water, where a swimmer at the far left and a sailboat near the centre appear reduced in scale. The photograph does not organise itself hierarchically. What is usually peripheral becomes the image’s primary field.
In Sand, the composition is reduced further. A single dune cuts diagonally across the lower frame beneath a wide sky. Two small figures appear at the far left of the horizon. The disproportion is clear: sky dominates, ground compresses, the figures remain marginal. The scene holds together, but lightly. Dust, scratches, and pronounced light leaks rise from the lower edges. The image registers not as a fixed landscape, but as something exposed.
In The Wave, a woman stands at the edge of the sea with her back to the camera, her arm lifted in a gesture that suggests action without resolving into one. To the left, a dog moves across the sand, its form softened by motion. The horizon is low and faint, and all elements occupy a subdued tonal range. Nothing asserts dominance. Grain, colour drift, and light interference soften edges and prevent full clarity. The moment is visible, but not secured.
Accidents—marks of the film, shifts in colour, instabilities—are not removed. They are the subject. They register time, process, and the limits of control. What emerges is not a narrative about goodbye. Goodbye appears indirectly, through the way forms soften, disperse, and resist full stabilisation. Purlija does not declare an end. She watches them fade.
What might initially appear as a withdrawal begins to register differently. It is perhaps the most exposed work she has made, precisely because it risks being overlooked. That risk—the possibility of dismissal—is the sign of an artist who no longer needs to assert authority. Purlija has stopped proving. She is simply looking.
The Beauty and the Hurt
There is a risk in reading Purlija’s work as purely about instability. Something essential is missing.
Asked what has remained constant in her artistic voice, she gives a simple, precise answer: “The beauty and the hurt.” That duality is not a theme. It is a condition. Tenderness and fragility are not opposites. They are the same thing, seen from different angles.
Tenderness and fragility are the same thing, seen from different angles.
Her recent turn toward birds and environmental crisis extends this logic. “I am working on a series about birds,” she says, “worrying about the ones going extinct, dying from changing coastlines and warming waters. Research has shown that birdsong is the sound that calms us most and tells us the world is ok.” The urgency is real. But the photographs do not shout. They register loss obliquely—through absence, through fragility, through what is already slipping away. The dead bird in Infinite mile #13 is not presented as evidence. It reads instead as an elegy for what cannot be stabilised as evidence.
What remains difficult to name is the emotional register of the work. Purlija’s images do not settle easily into sadness. Sadness implies a desire for things to be otherwise. These photographs resist that impulse. They remain with what is—fragile, temporary, already fading. It registers as a form of clear-eyed mourning.
Purlija’s photographs do not offer consolation. They register interruption—what she describes as “glitches in the fabric of time and space.”
Her images hold those glitches just long enough to be registered, never long enough to stabilise. Then they loosen. Then they pass.
The conversation that follows traces how she arrived at this way of looking—and why she no longer tries to hold what refuses to stay.
I see life through chance encounters, glitches in the fabric of time and space. — ZORICA PURLIJA
M-ARTLENS: You migrated from Montenegro to Australia at a young age. How has this shaped your understanding of identity and belonging?
ZORICA PURLIJA: It was a very stressful time settling into a new culture, it was a racist time in 1972, and being sensitive, I wanted to quickly assimilate, learn the language, and be understood. Initially rejecting my culture due to bullying, it took a long time to feel comfortable and proud of being Montenegrin, well into my adult years. What it ultimately did was cement my way of observing subtle nuances in behaviour, which gave me a strength in portraiture of looking beyond the surface.
You originally studied architecture. How has that early training influenced the way you construct images today?
I loved studying architecture, and we studied ancient cultures, philosophy, and fine arts. It was incredibly inspiring. My sense of beauty, colour and form might be what I gleaned from those few years.
After your studies you travelled widely through Europe. What impact did those years have on your development as an artist?
After my design and photography studies at the University of Western Sydney, travelling through Europe further opened my eyes to the arts, in Spain being face to face with El Greco’s paintings showed me what art can be, a gateway to the sublime, it was a tremendous, moving experience. I travelled alone, which was both daunting and a time of personal growth and independence. In London I was lucky to find a house to share with Danish creatives, who spurred on my creativity and broadened my artistic network. I found a job at a glamour photography company as a retoucher, which was fun. I absorbed art, architecture and the urban settings in London.
The photograph does not fail to hold the world; it reveals that it never fully held it to begin with.
How has balancing family life with an artistic practice shaped your evolution as a photographer?
It was difficult, it took me many years after my first child to decide my passion was worthy and that I had to just do it. I am lucky I have a very supportive husband who didn’t stand in the way of my freedom to wander, think and follow my intuitions. After my third child was born is when I really started to consider an art career no matter what, basically photographing my daughter every day during our daily life is how I got to see the world through photography. Entering competitions has been a way to validate my choice and be considered as an artist amongst peers.
Your work often focuses on attachment, vulnerability, and emotional intimacy. What draws you to these themes?
I have quite a melancholy disposition, growing up as a migrant in a foreign country was terribly hard for my parents, my father became addicted to gambling and my mother had depression, it all weighed heavily on my psyche. The human condition, our choices shaping life, absurdity, all were considerations. And then having children was an amazing experience, pure love.
Texture, softness, blur, and imperfection appear throughout your work. What does the material surface of an image mean to you?
The in-between moments were what I was wanting to capture, so naturally using a slow shutter and shallow depth of field were my staple choices. I see life through chance encounters, glitches in the fabric of time and space. I see that things are not so clearly defined, I try to break through those fallacies.
How do you approach intuition and chance in your practice?
There are times I am always with my camera when I am almost willing things to come, a sort of confidence, I think that’s my intuition, then I give it up, I am walking aimlessly, sort of lost, then something happens, maybe in a song or a book, there is something which touches me, an inspiration.
How did completing your Master of Art (Photo Media) change or expand the way you think about your work?
The Master of Art forced me to think about working in a series form. My approach is to start with one image which holds everything in one image, abstract, without a linear story, which is how I see life. The Master was invaluable as it taught me about research and precedents, and placing myself within the contemporary art world.
So, This is Goodbye was created with an antique Argus 75 camera. Why this camera, and how did it shape the mood of the series?
I bought the Argus 75 at the markets, it gave me the option of a medium format camera where I can make big images, the great thing about it is because of its age and condition, when I photograph all chance happenings enter the equation. Because I have to trim the 120 film spool to fit the camera as they don’t make 620 rolls anymore, the film gets varying degrees of light seepage. All those mistakes add to the ethereal nature of the image, I welcome it.
The project imagines a world in which nature takes over again. What were the ideas or emotions behind this direction?
For some years now my focus has turned from the portrait to the care of nature. I realised the love of family must include nature as it gives us so much, my intention is for other people to see that too and want to care for it, we are trained into thinking technology will solve all our nature problems.
In The Fall, you photographed Minyon Falls and its surrounding bushland. What drew you to this landscape?
The exuberance it gave to the people inside the waterfall, it was mesmerising. We are so blessed with our environment. Research shows how anxiety and depression are reduced when we spend time in nature, recalling from my architecture studies in the 1980s we knew the benefits of our natural environment, that’s 40 years ago and we are still so careless about our environment.
The landscapes in The Fall feel psychologically charged. How do you translate inner emotion into your images of place?
I think I find images which resonate with me, it is amazing all these people are just in thrall of nature. I didn’t set anything up; there is no manipulation, just pure emotion. I love that.
Fade Into You explores connection and how identities merge. How did this project begin?
My daughter at that time was my sole focus, she was in her teenage years, being privy to such beauty and anxiety was the starting point. The landscape is from our yearly trips to Crescent Head with our Sydney friends. Those times together were of friendship, love and shared experiences in healing bushland.
From the Sun to the Moon and Back moves into video work. What did working with moving image allow you to express?
It allowed me an added layer of meaning using sequencing of dark images to light images creating a rhythm to increase mood.
Themes of cycles, time, and care run through this project. How do they relate to your wider practice?
The project was made during COVID-19, where I photographed every day for over a year, my daily life with my daughter, my mum and sister and husband and the strangers I encountered. My role as a mother is centred around this project, the care and love to and from family. I can’t separate myself from acting as a mother, it extends into all I do and think about so naturally, the landscape has been a major concern as the years go by for my practice.
Into Silence explores quietness and introspection. What forms of silence were you interested in capturing?
I was interested in the writings of Brian Greene at the time, listening to his ideas about time and space and the notion that past, present and future all exist at once. Thinking about our universe, different dimensions, a freeing of the mind.
Biomorphic moves into abstraction and organic form. What inspired this series, and what were you exploring?
The rocks sculpted by wind and water over long periods into beautiful shapes and forms and how that mirrors the development of youth into adolescence.
All those mistakes add to the ethereal nature of the image. I welcome it.
Your long-term portrait work with your daughter is central to your practice. What has this ongoing collaboration taught you?
To be so grateful, it has been a few years now where my daughter has not permitted me to photograph her at those moments of beauty, it is only in my head.
Looking across your career, what do you feel has remained constant in your artistic voice?
The beauty and the hurt.
What ideas or themes are guiding you as you think about your next body of work?
I am working on a series about birds, worrying about the ones going extinct, dying from changing coastlines and warming waters. Research has shown that birds’ songs are the sounds that most calm us and tell us the world is ok.
For more information, visit the artist’s website: zoricapurlija.com.au
