Photo sensitive

    Sharon Verghis
    From: The Australian
    May 14, 2011 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/photo-sensitive/story-e6frg8n6-1226054026248

Stepping outside, he blinks in the glare. Maynard speaks -- mumbles, more accurately -- so softly you have to lean in close to catch his words. It's difficult to picture him as the intrepid young photographer who spent more than four months immersed in a Catholic community of transsexual prostitutes in a shanty town in Dili, East Timor, last year. While documenting its transient inhabitants for his debut solo exhibition, Trans/Tender, opening this month at Sydney's Damien Minton Gallery Annex, he contracted dengue fever and was bedridden for weeks. It certainly has been an unlikely creative journey, and one forged on equal measures of 19-year-old naivety and "a lot of guts", says bemused gallery owner Damien Minton, a family friend.