Photography
“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.” Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Photography has run parallel to my drawing and painting for over 30 years, though always in a secondary, supportive role, as an image-gathering visual sketchbook .
My first ventures into photography were in black and white film during the late 1980s, when I started to document the decline of industry in the Black Country and the effect of this on people and culture. Most of these negatives lay unprinted and forgotten about until recently I started to digitally scan some of them to see what was there. The inherent power of these images has made me completely rethink my relationship to photography .
The iPhone reawakened my interest in photography as I had a camera always in my pocket as well as the ability to edit images. I consider the iPhone an essential creative tool. However, after seeing the images on the early negatives I've bought some good quality cameras, and photography is an evolving area of my visual practice .
The subject matter of my photography has gone hand in hand with my drawing and painting: stark social commentary next to untainted nature and the interactions between the two.
Photography forces us to live in the moment to and to walk around with our eyes wide open, ready to capture the fleeting second. Technique and concept are secondary to composition for me and I look for pleasing interactions of shapes, my eye being constantly alert. Meaning comes later as I assess the images I've taken, though my driving force in photography is the same as my drawing: namely, an existential search for meaning through images.
Photography has run parallel to my drawing and painting for over 30 years, though always in a secondary, supportive role, as an image-gathering visual sketchbook .
My first ventures into photography were in black and white film during the late 1980s, when I started to document the decline of industry in the Black Country and the effect of this on people and culture. Most of these negatives lay unprinted and forgotten about until recently I started to digitally scan some of them to see what was there. The inherent power of these images has made me completely rethink my relationship to photography .
The iPhone reawakened my interest in photography as I had a camera always in my pocket as well as the ability to edit images. I consider the iPhone an essential creative tool. However, after seeing the images on the early negatives I've bought some good quality cameras, and photography is an evolving area of my visual practice .
The subject matter of my photography has gone hand in hand with my drawing and painting: stark social commentary next to untainted nature and the interactions between the two.
Photography forces us to live in the moment to and to walk around with our eyes wide open, ready to capture the fleeting second. Technique and concept are secondary to composition for me and I look for pleasing interactions of shapes, my eye being constantly alert. Meaning comes later as I assess the images I've taken, though my driving force in photography is the same as my drawing: namely, an existential search for meaning through images.
