Lightning Without Flash exhibition Joe Ruckli

Lightning Without Flash is a solo exhibition by documentary photographer Joe Ruckli which seeks to unearth the idiosyncratic qualities of Lightning Ridge, a rural mining town in northern New South Wales famous for its large deposits of Black Opal. The featured objects and photographs suggest an inhospitable landscape that belies the beauty of its gems and precarious labour hidden below. Scorched by the sun and secluded deep within Australia’s vast interior, the exhibition reveals strange and surreal glimpses of life on the minefields and its fringes; a subterranean world where prospectors chase their fortune and hermits search for somewhere to retreat or disappear.