behind the lens
Hey, I’m Gabi.
I’m a photographer, storyteller and the person behind Degotardi Imagery.
Long before it became a business, photography was simply how I made sense of the world. I’ve always been drawn to people — their expressions, their stories, the spaces they belong to and all the little details that might otherwise disappear with time.
I studied photography at RMIT University, but some of the most important things photography has taught me happened outside the classroom: to notice, to be curious, and to understand that an ordinary moment can become extraordinary simply because one day, it becomes a memory.
A name with a history
Degotardi Imagery takes its name from my fifth great-grandfather, John Degotardi — a photographer, printer and publisher working in Sydney during the nineteenth century.
More than a century before I picked up a camera, photography was already part of my family story.
John worked during photography’s early years, when making an image was far removed from the instant process we know today. Yet his words about the purpose of photography still resonate with the way I see it now — not simply as something beautiful, but as a way of leaving something behind.
“Photography will be handed down to posterity as the truest and most lasting monument to the combined powers of man, art and nature.”
— John Degotardi, 1861
