Sita, 2026 (Part of the series “An Ordinary Life”) by Jana Koelmel

Sita Walker is a high school English teacher, writer and award-winning memoirist who has lived in Brisbane for most of her adult life. Her latest novel, In a Common Hour, is set in a state school in suburban Brisbane, the environment she knows best. She is also the colleague and friend of photographer Jana Koelmel’s husband, which is how they came to meet. 

After relocating from Germany to Brisbane seven years ago, Koelmel began photographing friends and family with her large-format camera, what began as a technical exercise gradually becoming a long-term series she calls An Ordinary Life. In this portrait, Walker is one of the subjects, photographed in her immediate surroundings, a living room, a veranda, a garden, the ordinary spaces that hold a life. “As an outsider, I appreciate small details that might otherwise go unnoticed,” says Koelmel.