Mane & Tales
Interview by Alice Armitage Photography by Elise Idiens
“Sometimes you need to fully immerse yourself in something hard or something scary, to wade through all of those emotions and personal complexities about something. When I came back from Sri Lanka, I wasn’t scared anymore.”
When you first meet Elise, there are two things you might instantly notice. She is wholly present in the moment and also incredibly shy. Two things that might at first seem to be in complete contrast but instead strike an unlikely equilibrium. Now residing in Bermagui, on the NSW South Coast, Elise lives a life dedicated to the ways in which she can explore, understand and build connection with people. From free haircuts at the White Cliffs Rodeo to her own self portraiture, there is something about Elise’s understanding of the human condition that’s hard not to be in awe of.
How are you Elise? I’m going well. It has been interesting watching the last year unfold in this small little town that leans on tourism for its vitality. It was my first time seeing that and experiencing that as a business owner. As we head into summer it’s going well, now there are lots of tourists back in town and the sun is out after all this rain. Once again, finding a park in the main street is a challenge!
What have you been up to since we spoke last? How have the past couple of months been for you? What have you been doing? My biggest ambition recently has been to spend more time educating myself further on First Nations peoples and culture. Since having made the decision to do that, I keep meeting people who are exposing me to so much. The cultural dances that I have been attending, the strength of the people, just the spirit of it all is like nothing else. I’ve been absorbed by the Yuin Nation since moving here to Bermagui. This place is so strong. I’ve been offering haircuts to some of the First Nations ladies around Batemans Bay and Narooma. That has been a very beautiful experience to be a part of. You just see
the room melt away when people are coming together to connect with their culture, and it’s so beautiful. It has been such a gentle, gradual experience for me. I’m using hair and photographs as a way to connect with the land and with country. People are often guarded so they don’t let too many secrets out but I’m slowly building respectful relationships.
Every time I talk with you, I feel ever so slightly transformed into a completely different way of looking at the world. It’s like you see life through a lens that the rest of us don’t. I’m shy by nature but I don’t let that hold me back for some reason. I feel like everyone has a story and I have always been facinated by human nature. Sometimes being shy gives me a chance to be around people in a different way. I think it’s the reason why I see things differently and why I pursue these goals in life of connecting with community in more of a humanitarian light than just cutting hair or taking a photo. I am a single 38 year old woman and I don’t have property, I don’t have a family to look after or a partner to share this experience with or have to make time for them as well. My life is different so the way I experience the world is a little different too. I always hope that I produced a certain honesty and intimacy that is not regularly seen.
Some might think your work as a hairdresser and your work as a photographer is so vastly different. But there is a connection between the intimacy of someone trusting you to cut their hair and the intimacy of someone trusting you to take their photograph. Maybe trust is the wrong word because it’s an instinctual exchange to allow someone else to do those things. Have you ever really thought about that? About how that experience or that relationship with a person is kind of the same when you’re cutting their hair and also taking their photograph? It’s an intimate exchange with a stranger, cutting someone’s hair. So that trust for some reason is the oddest thing. When someone sits down and as soon as you comb their hair and they explain what they want and then they say you do what you want I trust you. I don’t know how that works, I just touched your hair and now you want to say that. What I do is a representation of you and your personality and a portrayal of exactly what you are to the rest of the world. It’s so important for me to get what I do to your hair correct. I need to sort of somehow get to know that person quite quickly to know how far I can push artistically, a haircut or a photograph. Funnily enough, I’ve always felt comfortable cutting someone’s hair but not always taking their portrait. I really struggled with portraiture. At first I was too scared and too slow with my camera, especially shooting manually to get the moment correctly. I would
get too wound up and nervous about it. When I first began my interest in hairdressing, at fifteen, at school, a friend of mine asked me to do her hair for a modelling competition. So we drove from our little village of Gulgong to Orange to this community modeling competition. I don’t remember what it was, it probably was a miss show girl or something! Once I had done her hair and seeing her on that cat walk, so confident and strong. It just really filled me. It wasn’t about hair, it was about the artistic position that I had with hair as the canvas. It was making that person feel amazing. Now I’m starting to get that confidence with my potraits as well.
Tell me about White Cliffs. To me White Cliffs is a vast dry vitality and beauty in the NSW Outback. Every year the town hosts their annual Blue Bush Gymkhana and Rodeo. For the last four years I’ve been going out there, offering free haircuts and taking some photographs. As I have been with the First Nations people, it’s a way for me to connect with the land. To start, I found it a little bit tricky going out west. It took a bit to get those conversations going. So after four years of going out there I’m finally getting those conversations flowing. I’m determined to learn more of our country and I also try to inflict that interest on the people of our urban areas by producing photography exhibitions of my time when I am out there. While at White Cliffs this year I actually had a young man, maybe he was nine, come back as a repeat customer. He said he liked the way I cut his mullet.
I completely understand if you don’t want to talk about this, but I think it’s an extraordinary thing that you’ve gone through. When did you break your back? September last year I had surgery on two severely herniated discs in my lumberspine. One of the discs has since completely collapsed, though I have chosen not to intervene with further surgery of an artificial disc. The way I now deal, is with ocean swimming at least five times a week to keep my pain levels at a minimum and hope everyday that the vertebrates are content at fusing together on their own. Believe it or not bulging discs are a regular occurrence for a lot of the world’s population, like grey hair and wrinkles really! But if you do not take the time out to settle your nervous system and treat the bulge as if it was a fracture or a broken arm and keep swinging on the monkey bars of life, like I did - shit gets real. No matter how many physiotherapists or massage appointments you throw money at.
Do you think this experience has changed the way that you approach people or how you want to understand someone else’s experience? Or do you think that really you’ve always been this way, that you want to understand and document other people’s lives and their stories? It has most definitely made me more aware of what anyone on a pain journey is experiencing. I have since made the effort to become a mental health First Aid responder and I volunteer in simple gardening tasks for the senior citizens of my community. I garden for some locals who are older and live on their own has been particularly special because I went through the challenges of chronic pain and immobility myself. I understand how hard it can be to just open a car door, fill up a kettle, put the kettle back on the base, just any weight bearing things. I think about people in their eighties having so much trouble in their beautiful homes that they’ve just worked for all their life. When you’ve got a pain that is invincible, it’s so hard to get people to understand. I have that understanding now and I’m trying to do something meaningful with that.
You mentioned before that you’re originally from the land? Yes!
Did you say fourth generation, or that your dad was fourth generation? I want to make sure we get that right? I suppose my brother is the fourth technically, he runs the farm with my dad. But I grew up on the family farm and it always sticks with you. When I was little my grandparents lived in the big homestead and we were in the smaller house on our 3000 acre property. It’s very special when you grow up with your eyes so wide and open. I think my mum grounded me once, maybe many times. But it didn’t really make a difference because you’re out in the middle of nowhere living free anyway. Of course I would throw a tantrum in response but then simply go off riding. Touch spoiled.
How did you get into photography? You’ve been cutting hair for such a long time, since you were fifteen, but photography seems to have come later for you. I always find in different creative mediums it’s such an interesting thing, how people start to engage in that skill, because often the path is windy and not necessarily particularly prescribed. I began taking photos whilst I was living in Sydney. My partner at the time was studying at the Australian Centre for Photography, we were both living in Sydney. We would walk through all the laneways walking to the pub. He opened my eyes to being observant in a different way. As we walked I would start to consider things in a different light and start pointing them out, so Stephan taught me a little bit. We started going on what we called a photo safari. If we had a quiet afternoon we’d go on safari, where we would just walk along all the laneways taking photos of the interesting doorways, people, gardens. Then we separated. I was so scared and anxious without his guidance so I went on to only using disposable cameras. I just sat with disposable cameras, because I could see what needed to be taken but I hated the complexity of taking photos with a fancy camera. My head would explode with everything I thought I needed to know. Eventually I just picked up a good book. I honed in on it and learnt everything I felt I needed to know to take the next step. Then I took a camera and I took myself to Sri Lanka when I was thirty. I did nothing but explore and take photographs for three weeks. Sometimes you need to fully immerse yourself in something hard or something scary, to wade through all of those emotions and personal complexities about something. When I came back from Sri Lanka, I wasn’t scared anymore.
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