Cyanotype test fabric becomes dishcloths in my Hong Kong Studio, 2008

Spring’s come to Sydney
But artists have no weekend
I pick up my brush.

* Proof I am not a haiku professional

Lai Chau, Vietnam, on assignment for my book Sensual Papers: Through the Back Roads and Rivers of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

I’m standing by one side of the road as my guide pisses off the other. We’ve been chasing rumors of papermakers through the back roads of the province all afternoon but haven’t had any luck. I take off my helmet, wipe off sweat and sunscreen, and admire the view anyway.

My guide walks up next to me and shares a grin. “How about we go to the knife village?” he asks.

“Knife Village?”

“Yeah they turn car parts into knives. It’s famous throughout Lai Chau.”

If a province has no noteworthy features, why not make one up?

The road is lined with rickety open-air shelters, each strung with knives made by the family of blacksmiths who live in a house next door.

“These are all made from destroyed cars,” my guide says.

I picture the slender blacksmiths tearing apart car bodies.

“They use car springs, brakes, that kind of thing,” he says. I nod, as though I have an idea of what a car brake looks like, and pick up a knife. It is cold and rough, a pleasing weight in my hand.

“How much do you think they’d charge a foreigner for this one?” I ask.

“Let’s find the guy who owns this place,” my guide says.

We walk over to the house where an elderly man smiles at us through an open window. He reads through the mid-day heat, and his book catches my eye. It’s not printed in the Roman script of Vietnamese. Instead, its pages are covered in a hand-written script, neither completely traditional Chinese characters nor the modern version.

“This is a prayer book,” my guide says. “The man is from the Dao people, and this is their family’s book. The paper is….” he pauses to translate, “from China, maybe handmade, maybe not.”

I look through the translucent pages into the sunny sky. The paper fibers go in all directions. “It’s handmade,” I say. “Did he write the book himself?”

“He copied it from another book. No, this village doesn’t make paper anymore, there’s a road and they can buy everything they need from the markets.”

Except knives, apparently.

“Now he wonders how much you will pay for the knife. He can throw in a pair of handmade scissors for half price.”

Growing up, I was happiest in a room filled with books. I’d save pocket money from odd jobs and household chores and spend it on discreet paperback classics and pulpy fantasy novels. It was an escape from the tyrannical atmosphere of our family home, and my bedroom was soon filled with books containing worlds and words that offered a kind of comfort I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Today, every time I pass a quirky-looking bookstore I can’t resist going inside it. The best bookstores are one-of-a-kind places featuring indie publishers like mine, and a welcoming atmosphere that reflects the neighborhood, not the ethos of a suburban chain store.

My favorite neighborhoods in Sydney are Darlinghurst and Paddington, where the bookstores per-capita are the highest in town.

This display drew me into Ariel Books today:

Who thought astroturf could look so good on a book cover?

Orange stools and flowers invite readers to spend some time with Ariel’s punk rock selection

Their kids’ section has a well-used table to tame small customers and give parents a few moments peace

And you can browse through books while relaxing on a couch under a pseudo-gothic poster of Winona Ryder by Marc Ryden

My next stop was Ampersand Cafe Bookstore, its three storeys filled with secondhand books selected by discerning buyers.  Their staff are friendly, laid-back and highly caffeinated. Their Lindt mochas could knock a girl’s knickers off with a rich and creamy chocolate kick.

The best way to savor Ampersand is to soak in the atmosphere of their reading rooms like this one:

Reading by the light of a chandelier is a romance you can’t get at home

These velvet chairs are the perfect place to rifle through shelves packed with travel and art books. I found photos of handsome Moroccan men taken by Paul Bowles during his long residence there, and spent some quality time exploring imaginary worlds with Jan Morris.  A room-full of books still gives a comfortable escape from a frenetic world, and offers undreamt-of possibilities.

What’s your favorite bookstore, wherever you are now or wherever you’ve been?

My favorite papermaker Supan Promsen with his niece and a woodblock printed on his paper, 1 x 2 meters

Each day I walk into my studio, and as I look over my work-in-progress, the paper I’ve been painting gives me a thrill. This unique paper is custom-made for my artwork by Supan Promsen, the man pictured above.

But while I like to use old-school art materials, everything else about the work is 21st century. Supan and I communicate by email, in English. He keeps me up to date on the progress of my paper as it’s being made, then FedExes it to me in Australia. I photograph myself and others with a digital camera as we model for my paintings, and use Google to translate text into Chinese, Thai, and Japanese for my current series.

Many times I’ve rued all the stuff it takes to make art. Usually when lugging artwork across town, or moving countries again. Easels and stretcher bars and large-format thick papers take up a lot of room. I’ve often wished I could be content with all my work being purely digital; it would make for lighter luggage, but artwork on an iPad wouldn’t give off that subtle mulberry smell that my paper does. Something like cornstarch. It’s an elixir to a materialist like me.

And that’s what keeps me working with all this stuff: the materials are a crucial part of the process: as I mold them with my ideas and hands, I transform them into art. Or [because nobody interesting agrees on a definition of ART anymore] something like it.

Detail of painting on Thai paper, 70 x 100cm, 2010

This is the image many have of Hong Kong – a junk cruising the waters of one of the finest harbors of the world, sails spread to catch the breeze. But when I travelled around the territory searching for images to illustrate my kids book, I decided not to make any cyanotypes of beautiful boats like this.

Why? Because Hong Kong people don’t actually use them in their daily lives, and haven’t for ages. What they DO use is more prosaic: taxis, double-decker buses and minibuses, and the MTR [subway]. Yet there are still some ways to get around town like Trams and the Star Ferry that are unique to Hong Kong; they’re the most affordable way to travel, and you’ll literally rub shoulders with all strata of society. Passengers coast the seas or the streets at a leisurely pace, and experience the transition from one neighborhood to another.

And best of all, these ferries are still as photogenic as ever.

Detail of Painting on handmade Thai paper, 70 x 100cm, 2010

My life is split between two amazing cities: Sydney and Bangkok. At first glance they seem to have little in common besides loads of fresh produce and a generous dose of sunshine. Bangkok has double the population, ten times the pollution, and costs a fraction of what it takes to live in Sydney. But both cities are a haven for long-term travelers – and the travel industry that caters to them.

Last night the Sydney Travel Tribe met in the city’s CBD (Central Business District), and we talked late into the evening, fuelled by a World Nomads-sponsored bar tab. Most of us run websites – like the Travel Tribe co-founder Ian, who runs Travellr.com – or we write about travel online. It was an excellent chance to talk travel p*rn. I saw Stuart from Travelfish for the first time in years; met Brooke, a fellow American in Sydney; ran into Dina, who’s passing through town on her trip around the world; was bowled over by the character behind Brokepacker, a new discount hostel site; met several writers; and had a look at the BUG guidebook and publisher.

All of the websites at Travel Tribe have different goals. Their creators range from burgeoning travelwriters to seasoned guidebook professionals.

But one thing we all have in common: without exception, we’d all skimp on our hotel room for the sake of an extra beer.

THIS guy is the reason I moved to Hong Kong

In the minds of many boys stifled by the post-industrial classrooms of Europe and America, Hong Kong equals just one thing: Kung Fu.

And I married one such boy, once he was grown up – or something like it. He convinced me to move to Hong Kong so he could fulfill his dream of studying with a Kung Fu master. I had a look around the art galleries of Central Hong Kong, got a jolt of energy from chaotic Kowloon, and took a stroll along the secluded pathways of Lamma Island. Straight away I was hooked on Hong Kong’s raw streets and cosmopolitan aspirations. Its traditions transformed into modern life.

Wan Kam Leung has created a unique form of Kung Fu. This has not endeared him to local competitors. He is (in)famous throughout Hong Kong for his unorthodox methods of training and transforming martial arts. But as you can see in the picture above, this master isn’t one to be trifled with.

When I visited his studio, he was happy to demonstrate his martial arts moves for my camera, suddenly as agile as someone four decades younger than his sixty-five years. He grasped a heavy six-foot pole and handled it as though it were light as a toothpick, balancing and stabbing it in a sequence of choreographed moves. But when he took out his knives and flayed invisible opponents like they were fillet mignon, I knew I had the right shot.

Later that year I handed him a copy of the book H is for Hong Kong, and opened it to his picture. I had illustrated it with my favorite expressions of Hong Kong’s culture. Wan Kam Leung took the book in his hand – so strong it could easily crush both of mine – and smiled.

I travel to drink in the world through all my senses. When I saw this rough golden silk in Hanoi I had to touch it. The strands of silk felt like dried grass under my fingers, and I bought two yards to see if I could Cyanotype it.

“Where on earth did you find this?” I asked my friend Van. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

We were in Van’s tiny silk shop Silkaa, across from Hanoi’s Cathedral. Her landlady coughed and cackled from the mezzanine above, resting her old bones before transforming the silk store into a tea shop for the evening.

“I’ve bought the silk from a village in northwest Vietnam, then take it to another village where they weave it for me. I’m headed there tomorrow. Want to come?” she asked.

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse: a weekend away from Hanoi’s sweltering afternoons, and the chance to see this straw spun into gold.

The next morning we caught a 6am bus to the village, and the driver dropped us off near the weaver’s home.

We were greeted at the door by this orange bag bursting with silk strands – so wiry they looked like vermicelli noodles.

After the silk is washed and dried it is smoother than before, but most of the original gum coating remains. This gives the silk its unique texture.

The fabric has an open weave but is still incredibly strong. Van had commissioned the weavers to make hundreds of yards of it for a hotel in Saigon.

“They’ll use it for lampshades in their lounge and restaurants,” she said. It was one of the biggest orders she’d ever had, and she wanted to be sure of the fabric’s high quality during the entire project.

While it turned out the stiff coating on the silk prevented it from being a good material for my Cyanotype prints, I’m sure it was perfect for amazing golden lampshades for a swish hotel down in southern Vietnam, and ensured Van had plenty of gold for her business for quite some time.

Cures [Negative] 2003, My first Cyanotype

Jewel-colored bottles winked at me through my hangover one morning in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I stopped and peered into the window of an old apothecary shop, and wondered if there were any hungry slugs crawling inside this ceramic bottle of leeches. A hand painted sign told me I’d stumbled onto the “Pharmacy Museum.”

Never one to pass up a chance to peruse Western torture instruments – disguised as medical devices – I entered and scanned the museum’s hardwood shelves. There were false eyes and heavy glasses, elixirs and potions, and  even “Love Drawing Powders” to add that southern voodoo touch.

My hangover was forgotten as I squinted and framed shots that would work in high-contrast monochrome of blue and white. A tour group wandered in and out and I wove between the visitors, shooting whatever I could squeeze into my lens. Back then I shot with film, and knew that as the sunlight hit these bottles the film would turn it into liquid radiance on my final prints.

While most memories of my four days there were lost in a daze of jazz and whiskey, invitations and forgettable encounters, the photos from my trip were tangible moments of clarity.

And they were enough.

Months later, I enlarged my prints from the trip and transformed them into A4 [letter] size negatives at Kinko’s, and made Cyanotypes every night after I came home from my work. Printing Cyanotypes was a challenge unlike any I had encountered in painting. It was more exciting, more opaque, and completely unpredictable.

And after a few weeks I knew this portable art medium was just the right one for me. Instead of heavy paints and bulky canvases, all I needed to pack were two powders and paper. I could take it anywhere, and who knows, it might take me places too.

Sun and clouds inverted into a Camera Obscura on the Man’s hat

Recently I slept inside of a Camera Obscura, and now I can’t stop shooting these curiosities every time I run across them.

In these photos the sun and clouds are projected onto the wall and floors of a dark cinema at the Sydney Biennale, on Cockatoo Island. After screening a video I shot the different camera obscura scattered around the dark room.

Here you can even see a tinge of blue from the sky

Reddish sun and wispy clouds projected on a plywood wall

Suns and clouds scattered onto the carpet