We Are Singleton: Portrait of a Town project captures daily lives

In the We are Singleton: Portrait Of A Town project, created over two years as a social documentary of Singleton, Roser has been photographed with his father Mark McAlpin Roser.

The pair are shown holding musical instruments, standing in front of a white photographic studio screen in a piece of bushland where they both grew up, at Bulga.

It is land that once belonged to their forebears, with the family's history a direct ancestral line from one of the area's first European settlers, William Glass McAlpin.

The McAlpins owned a large tract of Bulga, where they raised cattle and grew fruit. The Rosers still have a certificate that their ancestors won for "Best Grapes in the Colony".

In recent years, the small town has been at the centre of a dispute over the expansion of the nearby Warkworth open-cut coal mine. At one stage it was officially suggested that the entire town be relocated.

Vahid Roser grew up by his Dad's side at folk music performances, and now runs the Bulga Beats music festival, which was started as a community project to help counter the divide caused by the mining debate.

Their stories were told as part of the first exhibition of the We are Singleton project, which Roser says "really shows Singleton as what it is".

"It's known as a mining town but in any town there's always more than what the stereotypes are," he says. "Mining has been here for a long time, but before that we were a farming town. We do kind of forget - there was something before the mines and there was something before us."

Roser says that being able to trace his family history back to the first settlers "that came over the mountains and picked the spot" creates personal connection, but "that's also tough because we were an invading family to the land".

For a while, Roser lived in Sydney where he was an AFL footballer playing in the Swans reserves. Now he works partly away from the district, running festivals, and partly locally as a teacher's aide at Singleton High School.

For his exhibition story, he wrote that the "family property is my roots, my escape and my safe place within the world".

"It is a place of connection to Earth with the Wollemi National Park at its back door, rich in both my family and Wonnarua history."

Roser says many people are surprised that he is a long-time local, because of his name. People don't ask him where he's from in a negative way, he says. It's a conversation starter.

The Rosers are of Baha'i Faith, and his name (which means unity) derived from a Bahai story.

The We are Singleton: Portrait Of A Town was started by Christopher Saunders, who worked with Singleton Council on the development of the town's new arts and culture facility.

Saunders, known for his work with Renew Newcastle, had many years ago worked on a similar project documenting community through photography and storytelling at a public housing estate in Sydney's Surry Hills.

His focus is on community development through breaking down barriers.

"Story is really good for doing that," Saunders says.

The photographic project created the exhibition which was the inaugural show at the new Singleton Arts and Cultural Centre.

The project continued for two years with more than 100 locals involved, culminating in a second, and final, exhibition which is currently on show.

Saunders had previously worked on a Singleton bicentennial project, with Newcastle-based photographer Edwina Richards, curating a series of old photographs of the district.

Richards was struck by the theatrical way the images showed locals in their daily life settings. When she joined Saunders on the contemporary portrait project, those old photos gave her an idea.

"That was my first impression, to go out into the community with a mobile studio and capture individuals," Richards says.

When COVID struck, Richards had to set up her studio with its big white square screen in socially distanced environments, which ended up meaning paddocks and backyards.

She was struck by "just how absurd it was to be carrying this big white thing into the bush or into a cow paddock, it was quite a funny thing".

The square white studio screen morphed into being part of the photographic performance, set within a landscape or place of meaning to the story.

Richards photographed groups, such as at the neighbourhood centre, as well as married couples and work mates, people posing with their dogs, their horse, their car, dancing under a washing line and at local historic landmarks.

Wonnarua woman Jade Perry is photographed wearing a possum skin cloak that belonged to her maternal ancestors. She is at Redbourneberry Hill where her great-great grandmother Sarah was given an acre of land in 1891 by the council, as a relocation from the St Clair Aboriginal Mission.

"Then one day with no notice the government took back this land," Perry wrote in her exhibition story. "When I stand on this hill I feel resilient and strong, I feel my ancestors' presence around me."

Robert Constable is more of a newcomer, he's been in Singleton 25 years. He opened his first butcher shop in Merriwa when he was 19 years old and married a multi-generational local. They also run beef cattle, supplying their own chain of butcheries.

"When I first came to Singleton it had a very transient community, with families coming and going all the time," Constable wrote. "From what I see now it's all one-way traffic, people just seem to be coming."

The town's ever-changing social landscape means more conversation starters for Vahid Roser.

"I want to live somewhere not just with people who think the same as me," he says.

"I like to be able to converse with people who are totally opposed to my views. Singleton provides that."