Photos By Thomas Wielecki
Thomas Wielecki is not a car photographer, he says, although the images showcased here seem to suggest otherwise.“I’ll be completely honest with you, the car thing has never really interested me,” he says. “It was something that happened by chance. A friend who was the editor of a car magazine gave me my first photographic assignment and it just went on from there.”
Thomas spends as much time in the outback as he can, and this is why he continues with his motoring gig. “If I don’t get outback every six months I start to feel claustrophobic,” he says. “I love the emptiness, the silence and the vast, open spaces of the desert with its blue skies and red dirt.”
Thomas has twice travelled around Australia on a motorbike, once in a wreck of a car and three times on commissioned photographic assignments. He brings an unusual perspective to bear on that environment having been born in Warsaw, Poland, and living in Karachi, Pakistan and Bogota, Columbia, before his family settled in Sydney.
It’s not nature that appeals to him but the human footprint. “Finding out why people do what they do is fascinating,” he says. “Everybody’s got a story, you could write a book about every one of them.”
Which brings us back to cars. “I often treat the car as a prop in the scene I’m photographing,” Thomas says. “I love making cars look completely out of place.” Prop or not, his photos are relished by car and outback lovers alike.
This story excerpt is from Issue #84
Outback Magazine: Aug/Sep 2012
