Dream Team

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday December 13, 2008

with ILSA CUNNINGHAM

An Australian Christmas is often spent outdoors swatting away the flies and trying to not work up a sweat.

As a child Mario Sanguineti always dreamed of a white Christmas, but it wasn't until he became an adult that his wish was granted.

The former Woonona software engineer and photographer who now lives in Canberra, experienced the thrill of a white Christmas in 2006.

Waking up to a chilly Christmas morning, Sanguineti and partner Sumon Aye checked online the weather conditions in the Snowy Mountains, and were delighted to discover snow had fallen.

"I realised this is what I've been waiting all my life for, a white Christmas in Australia," Sanguineti says. So they packed up their gear and arrived in the mountains at midday, Sanguineti spending all afternoon photographing the snowfall at Charlotte Pass.

"I always loved the snow. My uncle used to take me down when I was little every second weekend. Now I go skiing there and haven't missed a year," he says.

While Sanguineti was out capturing the first snowfall on Christmas day in 40 years in the mountains, Aye was absorbing her surroundings and storing memories. When Sanguineti developed the photos, Aye wrote poetry to accompany the images, which became part of the duo's first joint exhibition Our Play of Light.

"I see a unique picture or scene, and it motivates me to express my feelings and emotions in a poem," Aye says.

"Each poem represents a story. The photos are magical and magnificent and add glamour to the work."

In one poem she writes: "Snowflakes have a mind of their own. Although it is mysteriously unknown, they come uninvited, they disappear without being told."

For the exhibition, Sanguineti printed images on paper and others on canvas with a barred window-like frame. To some this may represent an outsider looking in on another world, but Sanguineti chose this method for practical reasons. This was the largest size he could print on canvas, so he joined multiple pieces of canvas together to complete the picture.

"You couldn't ask for a more intense white Christmas. There was 5-10cm of snow. You could feel the Australian sun piercing the clouds and the snow would start to melt," he says.

Sanguineti's white Christmas dream was complete when the couple enjoyed lunch and a few liqueurs by the fire in a log cabin.

The couple has also turned the images and poetry into a book which will be available at the exhibition, and plan to create a line of postcards and Christmas cards.

To add some contrast in the exhibition, Sanguineti included shots of colourful "beach boxes" at Brighton in Victoria, and snowdrifts taken at Thredbo during the year.

Our Play of Light is showing daily at Vision and Space Gallery in Austinmer until December 28.

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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