For Melbourne-based freelance photographer, Chrissie Francis, it was a love of music that sparked her love of photography. At the age of fourteen, armed with a Nikon FE2 smuggled into a concert of her favourite up-and-coming band (INXS), Francis had only one goal: to make pictures. “I had no idea about music photography. All I knew was that I wanted to photograph,” she says. Underage, inexperienced, and squeezed among the crowd, she still managed to capture a few great shots, and since then has spent many years photographing Melbourne’s independent music scene as well as many international artists.
It wasn’t until Francis had lived in London for a few years that she became keenly interested in architecture and history. “I spent a lot of time looking upwards in London, and learning,” she says. “There was so much to see and every street had a story. I loved that”. Back in Melbourne, she started to notice more of her home town which had changed enormously with many historical buildings being destroyed to make way for more apartment buildings. “I hope through photographing some of Melbourne’s historical buildings, before they disappear, that future generations will have a sense of what’s come and gone before them”.
On top of professional and personal endeavours, Francis is studying at Photographic Studies College in Melbourne, majoring in Photojournalism, and will complete her studies in 2017. She’s also a qualified marketing consultant where her work is based on creating content for commercial, editorial, and social media platforms. In terms of focus, the bulk of Francis’ commissioned work falls in the realms of architecture, events, and editorial.
Creating medium format landscape images of the built environment is Francis’ next personal project. “I’m fascinated by the way architecture and spaces make us feel, which can sometimes be a negative or positive experience,” she explains. When photographing buildings or the built environment, she seeks to capture how people interact with that space as well as find the most interesting aspects of it to adequately tell a story.
www.chrissiefrancis.com
