Smalltown is a view of the Australia we politely ignore.

In this rich and austere collaboration, photographer Marin Mischkulnig has joined writer Tim Winton to produce a meditation on the peculiar collision of beauty and ugliness that characterises our far-flung towns.

Without pulling any punches, this is an affectionate, exasperated take on 'fugliness and the smalltown shambolic' where both photographer and writer crate a stark beauty, despite the sad conviction that 'there is nothing so bleak and forbidding in country Australia as the places humans have built there'.

By showing us the bizarre and funny and sometimes stubborn hope of people who live in desolate circumstances, they invite us to wonder about what we build and how it affects our communities. What does it say about us that we build places 'just' to live or work in? Is beauty a luxury we don't believe we can afford? Is hardiness enough to sustain people, or does it finally limit the imagination?

Tim Winton has published twenty books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.