A local photographer is hoping to receive community support on Australia's inaugural arts giving day, #AusArtDay, which will occur nationwide on Thursday, 23 October.

Wangaratta resident Paul J Ryan is one of 300 artists on the Australian Cultural Fund (Creative Australia) fundraising platform vying for interest to bring his forty-year passion project to completion.

Creative Australia’s inaugural national giving day invites people to support musicians, artists and cultural organisations in their local communities.

A story about Paul J Ryan's masterwork project - images of cowboys, cattle and smalltown wonders captured while he traversed northern Australia following the cattle industry between 1982 and 2002 - appeared in The Wangaratta Chronicle last year, after he was selected to be a featured artist in the 2024 Head On Photo Festival in Bondi Beach.

The success continues this year with the Spirit & Place exhibition opening in November at Magnet Galleries in Melbourne, and Paul has a fundraising campaign underway as part of #AusARt Day to help digitise the film works and stories for publication, making them available to all Australians.

Paul says the thousands of images he recorded on Kodachrome film are a social documentary he is calling the Heartland Chronicles, taken by the first seed-funded, or civic-commissioned, artist-in-residency.

He said they are mostly unseen artworks with a back story of grit and resilience and post-trauma growth, rising from two decades of discrimination and persecution injury.

“The photographs have attracted so much attention due to their timeless content that goes some way to informing our national identity, the colour tones unique to analogue film and the arts works inform and enrich us from places less travelled," he said.

"It is a passion project celebrating rural and regional Australia.”

Paul is hoping to raise $500 this week with support from the regional Wangaratta community, to go towards recovering and restoring his lost photographs, to ensure their posterity for all.

Tax deductable donations can be made by visiting australianculturalfund.org.au, and searching Heartland, with 100 per cent of funds raised going to the artist to support their project.

Spirit & Place is on show from November 7 to 30 at Magnet Galleries in Docklands, Melbourne, with an opening event being held on Thursday, 13 November at 6pm.