At the centre of Australia lies a vast landscape, carved by time, where elements from across the continent distill into light and salt. Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre rests below sea level and the imprint of an ancient ocean endures beneath the crust. Most years it remains silent, a vast plain of reflection without water. But every few decades, distant rains gather in the north and begin their slow passage through the desert's veins. They carry with them silt, seed and life, flowing toward the continent's lowest point, where all things eventually come to rest. In 2025, I followed a similar path south-west, a personal pilgrimage drawn by the same gravity that guides the water. Through floodplain and desert, I travelled toward the memory of an inland sea. When I arrived, the lake had just begun to recede. Still immense and radiant, it stood between fullness and return. A thin skin of water moved across the basin like glass, filtering sunlight, layering itself over mineral crust, awakening dormant pigments - a liquid veil sweeping colour across the desert. Beneath the shallows, hues emerged. Blue from water reflecting the sky, rose from algae, jade from gypsum, ochre and gold from mineral and sun. I photographed the lake in that threshold, where water relinquished its hold and the desert began to reveal its design. These are not landscapes but records of transformation, the earth exposing its own architecture through pressure and time. Veil Obscura stands as a record of this rare alignment, the fullest Lake Eyre has been since 1974, and as an ode to the natural order that shapes such moments. The lake, the rivers and everything drawn to it are bound by the same law of return. I was not yet born when the lake last reached this fullness, and may not be alive when it does again. All that is seen here will vanish again, absorbed by heat, erased by wind, settled back into silence. Veil Obscura bears witness to that impermanence, to the truth that the earth's greatest works are never finished, only revealed, briefly, in passing.

Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre is Australia's largest lake and the lowest natural point on the continent. It lies around 15 metres below sea level in the remote deserts of northern South Australia. When full, it stretches across almost 9,500 square kilometres, a vast inland sea in the heart of the country. Most years though, it remains silent. A shimmering salt pan awaiting the return of water from rains that fall thousands of kilometres away in Queensland's Channel Country. Geologically, the Lake Eyre Basin is one of the world's great internal drainage systems, covering more than 1.2 million square kilometres, about one sixth of Australia's landmass. It began forming some 60 to 70 million years ago after the breakup of Gondwana. Over the past two million years, the basin's depression has been shaped by slow tectonic subsidence and the gradual drying of the continent. As an endorheic system with no outlet to the sea, Lake Eyre holds its stories in salt and desert sands. Each flood is both an ending and a beginning, a cycle that reveals how life endures in one of the harshest landscapes on Earth. When the waters return, millions of dormant brine shrimp eggs, algae spores, and micro invertebrates awaken. The lake transforms into a rich feeding ground for fish, insects and birds, sparking one of the largest inland breeding events on the planet. In these rare seasons, the sky fills with wings as migratory birds converge from across Australia and from as far away as northern Siberia and Alaska, with some travelling over 12,000 kilometres to reach these fleeting waters. The lake becomes a sanctuary of abundance and renewal, alive with movement and sound, before slowly retreating again into silence.