John Gollings is Australia’s premier photographer of the built environment and cultural heritage. His photos reveal his skilled architectural eye to locate the beauty, drama and humanity in the humble home, ancient ruins, sacred shrines, and majestic palaces alike. His vast oeuvre includes photographs of the built environments of Libya, and the Gold Coast as well as the cities of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. His commitment to documenting the built environments reaches far into history with collections on the Hindu temples of Borobodur in Indonesia and historic and sacred sites of Vijayanagara in India, as well as Khmer temples of Angkor Wat.
As part of the Kashgar Project of Monash University, Gollings has documented one of the most enduring Silk Road cities’ rapidly changing urban spaces where many relics of Uyghur culture and civilization are under threat. As people travel for trade and cultural exchange along the Silk Roads, dynamic urban centres developed—including the oasis city of Kashgar situated on China’s western-most border with neighbouring Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kyrgystan. Its 2000-year history as a major trading hub makes Kashgar a unique urban environment of profound cultural significance. Gollings’ remarkable images, framed with architectural expertise, provide us with rare glimpses of the city as a living cultural and commercial space and as a site of ancient connection between people of different beliefs and customs.
In the same collection photographed in 2005, Gollings has documented many now-destroyed shrines, or mazar, that punctuate the Islamic paths forged across the Silk Road landscape. Ranging from large mosques to small shrines, mazar mark the burial places of saints, kings, or prominent intellectual and religious figures. They are significant locations of pilgrimage for Muslims seeking spiritual support during natural disasters or to achieve good health and fertility. The rituals performed in the mazar range from simple acts of quiet prayer through to feasting and dancing. Many of the mosques and shrines Gollings has photographed have been destroyed making their preservation in these striking images even more precious to the continued celebration of human life on the Silk Roads.
In the images below we invite you to consider the connection between the past and the present and to appreciate how communication and exchange between myriad different peoples over vast stretches of human history have produced urban spaces and sacred sites of ongoing significance.
Kashgar mountains, from where snowmelt and glaciers sustain this ancient Silk Road city.
The central square of the Id Kah (ca. 1442) of Kashgar, the largest mosque in China. Until the past few years, the square was the site of religious and festive congregation as well as a bustling market space for centuries past.
A Kashgar neighbourhood scene where daily life and market space often exist side by side.
Children play in a Kashgar lane.
A master potter in front of his shop on Kozichi-Yabeshi street.
A vegetable vendor in an alleyway in Kashgar’s old town.
Interior of a typical Kashgari home.
A procession of donkey-carts carrying goods and market-goers from nearby villages and towns leaving the Grand Bazaar of Kashgar on a Sunday.
A donkey hitched to its cart waits patiently in front of a house in Bäshkeräm.
Villagers bathe in the filtered Spring sun under a grapevine-covered verandah in the centre of Bäshkeräm town.
The Imperial Mausoleum of Yarkand Khanat (16th – 18th centuries). Yarkand, Xinjiang.
Man prays in front of the Mazar of Chiltän. Yarkand, Xinjiang
Interior of a mausoleum with prayer flags. Yarkand, Xinjiang
A shrine encircled by local cemetery. Yarkand, Xinjiang
Interior of a shrine with prayer flags. Yarkand, Xinjiang
Shrine of Sultan Satuq Bughra (d. 955), the Khan of the Qara-Khanids. Atush, Xinjiang
Mazar of Akhunlughum amidst the village cemetery at the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Yopurgha County, Kasghar, Xinjiang.
Mazar of Appaq-Ghoja (Afak-Ghoja) encircled by the local cemetery. Kashgar, Xinjiang
Shrine of the 11th century poet, statesman and philosopher Yusuf Khas Hajib. Kashgar, Xinjiang
Interior of the shrine of Muhammad Sherip. Yarkand, Xinjiang
Artist Biography
John Gollings holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from RMIT University and an Honorary Fellowship of the Australian Institute of Architects. He is Adjunct Professor, School of Media and Communications, RMIT University.
He works in the Asia-Pacific region as an architectural photographer, much of the work involving long-term cultural projects especially in India, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Libya and New Guinea. Gollings specialises in the documentation of cities, old and new, often from the air. He has had a particular interest in the cyclic fires and floods that characterise the Australian landscape and he documents these with aerial photography. He was co-creative director of the Venice Architectural Biennale in 2010.
He has published two books of New Australia Style published by Thames & Hudson; City of Victory, Aperture; and Kashgar, Oasis City on China’s Old Silk Road, Frances Lincoln Limited. In 2012 Thames & Hudson published Beautiful Ugly a monograph of his contemporary architectural photography.
His work is held in national and international collections including: Asia Society, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne; State Library of Queensland, Brisbane; Janet Holmes á Court Collection, Cowaramup; Gold Coast City Gallery, Surfers Paradise; Rockhampton Art Gallery, Rockhampton; and the National Library of Australia, Canberra. The Kaladham Museum in Karnataka, India was built by the Jindal Steel Company to house John’s 40 years of work documenting the Hampi Ruins.
His work has recently been included in exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Gold Coast City Gallery, Surfers Paradise; Immigration Museum, Melbourne; Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In 2013, McClelland Gallery exhibited Aftermath, Gollings’ bushfire series from Black Saturday.
Gollings retrospective, A History of the Built World, opened at the Monash Gallery of Art in 2018 and is now showing through India. His documentation of Nawala Rock Art, A Spirit of Place, was at Heide Gallery of Modern Art in 2019
Australian Galleries have a major retrospective planned for 2021.
He has twice received the Australian Institute of Architects Presidents Prize and in 2013 he was awarded the inaugural William J. Mitchell International Committee Prize by the Australian Institute of Architects.
In 2016 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for ‘significant service to photography through the documentation of iconic architectural landmarks in Australia and the Asia Pacific region’.
