DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Down a concrete ravine behind the Ferrari showroom on Sydney's infamous boulevard William Street, is an urban wasteland. Scattered bodies sprawl in the gutter, or lounge on sheets of cardboard, awaiting the sluggish thrice-daily meal queue at the adjacent Matthew Talbot Hostel. The lane is littered with empty bottles of cheap poisons - cough mixture, sherry, port, meths - and the rancid stench of stale urine permeates the air. This is where I first met Peter Darren Moyle.

All traces of my Double Bay origins obliterated by a toxic cask of 'goon', I was attempting to infiltrate skid row, in order to document its culture for my university honours thesis. Several days lying around with the local methylated spirits fraternity had proven insightful, but I wanted more.

Dishevelled and raving about 'vibrations', Moyle at first appeared no different to the other bedraggled derelicts on the scene but in his hands he held an ancient Rolleicord camera with which he claimed to have made countless portraits of his brethren. On a split second decision and a prayer I accepted the invitation to visit his nearby residence, with the promise of photography to illustrate my writing.

The back gate (emblazoned 'junkie' in dripping red letters) swung open to reveal slabs of raw meat rotting on the ground and an unkempt German shepherd prowling about menacingly. Inside the apartment, socks dangled from the roof, mounds of quirky debris - gasmasks, papier-mache zebras - smothered the furniture, ashtrays overflowed. A landslide of books and papers made the floor impossible to negotiate. Strewn amongst all this were hundreds of large black and white photographs printed on fibre-based paper. I dropped to my knees for closer examination and was immediately overwhelmed.

At my fingertips were extraordinary portraits of prostitutes, transvestites, vagrants, squatters, derelicts, street kids, eccentrics, the mentally ill. It was as if Kings Cross and the surrounding territory had bared its soul to this photographer in all its debauched glory. These were images that could only have been taken from the inside: visions of stark, full-on, hardcore reality. And to heighten the impact, each picture had an extreme tale behind it. Many of the depicted were already dead, or at least halfway there.

Some of Moyle's images subsequently appeared in my 1999 thesis and upon its completion I found myself vicariously addicted to the chaotic, high-octane lifestyle he had allowed me insight into. And so the bourgeois voyeur and her underbelly correspondent maintained regular contact, evolving a strong mutual bond borne from shared connoisseurship of the diabolical. "Just don't fall in love with him, Sascha!" hissed my concerned mother as the frequency of our interaction intensified.

Over the next year, the idea for a documentary was conceived, and with eagle eye accomplice Justin Malinoswki and a digital video camera, we began following Peter Darren Moyle on his nighttime excursions out in the badlands. The objective was to translate the world of his still imagery into moving pictures and give a glimpse of the camaraderie and community which exists between the cracks in the pavement of the glossy Olympic city. Almost a year later, after legitimate funding for the project was secured, the process of documentation began to be formalized.

Irrespective of official administration and support, filming the documentary was a crazy, anarchic, organic process. Even at its height, the shooting schedule was a complete rollercoaster with the ever-unpredictable Mr Moyle often being outlandishly uncooperative or preoccupied with less salubrious distractions. However on the occasions where he was accommodating, enthusiastic and obliging, he presented a documentary-makers dream, unleashing fluent hours of priceless narrative, guiding the camera through the hottest spots in the capital of depravity and baring himself warts and all for the realest coverage - all of which would later make editing the film into its constricted timeframe a nightmare! Never a dull moment is perhaps the most appropriate euphemism to describe dealing with the tour de force that is Peter Darren Moyle.

On the lead up to his first solo exhibition curated by his mentor the renowned photographer and critic Robert McFarlane, Peter was virtually mobbed by the media, with (to mention only the most high profile) a page 2 story about his life and work appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald, a national radio interview on Triple J, and a live appearance on Channel 9's The Today Show. The opening night on January 18, 2001 at Phototechnica Gallery was itself a raging success, bringing together a diverse mix of social strata from bikies to businessmen, which was perfectly symbolic of Moyle's own photographic mission - to unite the family of humankind.

Since finishing the documentary Peter's images have been sought by the Sydney Morning Herald, the NSW State Archives and Australian Photo Journal, The Police and Justice Museum and he is well on his way to publishing a photographic book. Despite all this attention, His Moyle Highness still resides in a cluttered housing commission unit in Woolloomooloo and continues to photograph fervently around Sydney, frequenting food queues and all his regular haunts such as the Kirketon Road Centre, Vincentian Village meal room, The Wall and The Cross. And of course, my place!

- Sascha Ettinger-Epstein