The Rouchel Bushmans Carnival consists of three books.

The Rouchel Bushmans Carnival (A Portrait) Book 2. 

Introduction by Ron Morrison.

The Rouchel Bushman's Carnival and The Rouchel 
The two exhibitions include 225 printed photographs as well as over 1,000 images shown on two projectors. It also had overtones to me of the acclaimed The Family of Man exhibition held in New York in 1955. Both gave the viewer a sense of concern for people, social change and the environment. 

There were 10 walls of black and white and colour photographs brilliantly woven together. The photographs had been attached with push pins to plasterboard that had been screwed to the walls. 

Previously Allan had used a computer to design and plan the layout and relationships between the photographs. This exercise took many months. In all 70 linear metres of photographs were butted together. There was an intermix of sizes, colour and black and white images in varying juxtapositions, which worked very effectively. The final result was a montage similar to a movie film. It was a different refreshing exhibition. A brilliant concept. There were no captions directly associated with the photographs and no spaces between the photographs. Missing were the 10 x 8 prints in black bordered frames as has become the norm in photographic exhibitions these days. 

Viewing Allan’s two exhibitions, the eye automatically moved from frame to frame absorbing the context and relationships of each image. He explains that the exhibitions were not organised in chronological order but were displayed to show relationships. They were not shown as separate images. Allan’s justification for this is that separate works can be arranged in any order, thus altering the context and relationships. He comments, "Each photo is like a ‘daisy chain’; a new link that may spark another story from what might have been closed imagery. In this work, I am attempting to make a montage, as in a film, a journey of many photographs, not seeking out the quintessential image but presenting a collection of interdependent photographs". 

Allan states he is ‘obsessed with time and change’. He likes to return “to re-examine, to rephotograph, to make comparative photographs and to investigate change.” Allan, over the 20 years of photographing the Rouchel community and the carnival, has taken pictures back as regularly as he could. He hasn’t missed a year even when drought cancelled the carnival itself. He calls his photography: family photography. He photographed the Rouchel community as he would his own family. He photographed the details, the place and the people. Allan commented, “I am an outsider, but I want to be closer than a visitor is. I try to be connected with the people I photograph and visit more than once. I am an observer of people and their endeavours.” 

As he photographed the community over the years, he saw how they and the community changed. He watched the kids grow up. He saw the social changes in the hamlet - women who used to make the scones, now working the farm. Some of the people he photographed were now dead - some naturally, some accidentally. He saw it change from a dairy producing area to a beef fattening region and now changing again with the intrusion of horse farms owned by rich sheiks. Although some have suggested that his photographs could form an anthropological study, Allan rightly maintains that this is a fine art study. He further comments, “I am part a pictorial historian and a collector of the present.” 

Allan’s aim was to make, not take, the photos and to be as unobtrusive as possible. Allan stated that he asked them ‘Where do you normally sit?’ ‘What do you do?’ “I tell them just to feel comfortable. With the panoramic camera, I can then get in a corner, put the camera there and talk to them as the camera is making the picture.” Although Allan used many cameras to record his images, the Noblex panoramic camera, with its swinging, scanning lens and angle of view of 140 degrees, became his preferred camera for portraiture. Allan always used available light with the Noblex camera as the operation of the camera required continuous light. The frame of the Noblex camera is wide and narrow similar to a ‘Panavision’ movie screen which ideally suited Allan’s highlighting the relationship between the photographs. 

Perhaps the most iconic of Allan’s photographs is the 1.5 x 2.4 metre image of a group of local Rouchel people in front of the School of Arts. It acts as a focal point – a large family portrait. Allan comments, “People are clearly identifiable, standing in front of their School of Arts in a symbolic statement of ownership.” 
Many of the people of Rouchel feature again and again in the photographs which are not ordered chronologically. Their faces appear in different photographic panels, some a little younger, others showing the years of toil. One photo in particular shows one Rouchel bushman, sitting on a post with hand supporting his face, in almost identical poses taken in 1996, in 1998 and again in 2001. 

Allan chose to exhibit the work in the School of Arts as it seemed the most logical place to show the community the artwork produced about them. He chose not to show the work in a city location which might have had the greatest exposure to the public. 
​
Dr Ron Morrison, 2004 

Copyright Allan Chawner 2026