Silence is Brad Rimmer’s intensely personal and sometimes painful monograph of life in the once-thriving wheatbelt towns of Western Australia. Born in Wyalkatchem in 1962 Rimmer chose at nineteen to escape what he saw then as a bleak future. In Silence, he presents images that capture the region’s permeating dust, heat and isolation negotiating a delicate balance between hope and despair in his frank portraits of those who remain.

“I was worried about revisiting my old home and going inside the house, but I had no real connection at all. Everything that was in my mind had gone and I felt a strange relief. On my way out of town that evening I thought of how many people had left and never returned, just left for good. I’d never thought about that before,” (Brad Rimmer)