Description
About me
I Started practising photography when I was about 10 with a Box Brownie 127 rollfilm camera a bit like present day Holga cameras I guess. I used to take photos when i was on vacation with my parents mainly. As I got older I progressed to a 35mm camera then started using color film, again mainly on vacations in Europe so mostly landscape and buildings as my subject matter. In my later teens I acquired my first SLR and started using monochrome film as it was fashionable, and did my own developing and printing of my work at home having purchased an enlarger and all the other equipment. I was encouraged by my uncle who was a keen photographer who used 2 1/4 square format. I started experimenting with subject matter a lot and at the same time was studying art and graphics at college. I owned some graphic design awards at the time which were based upon building image abstractions and typography. I incorporated images which showed movement and other effects. When I was 21 I purchased a Rolleiflex 2 1/4 square 120 film camera and used mainly color film and that started a different way of observing my subject matter, mostly buildings and
street scenes which presented extremely abstract interpretations of the subject. Eventually I was also using large rural landscapes in the same way and created composite images which deconstructed the subject and reconstructed it in a very different way to seemingly great effect as I was given a number of exhibitions at that time including a highly regarded regional art gallery alongside some big names in the art and sculpture world.
Work / Education
Born in the UK I was educated at Bath and majored in Art and Art history and History of Building. At college I studied graphics and used photography to create designs commercially and for pleasure. My darkroom work embraced most film types including Litho work and solarisation, working in 35mm, half-plate, 5 x 4, and other media. My early graphic work won me several prizes including one from Oxford University’s Queen’s College.
With an educational background in the history of building, architecture and engineering it is no wonder that my work often consisted of studies of these forms. A study tour of European architecture honed his ability to observe and analyse structure and form. This enabled him to create works that explored the subject matter in new ways. These works led to one of his first exhibition’s in the prestigious Arnolfini gallery in his early years of photography. My work explores the environment in which I find myself during my work and travels around the world. A new environment will provoke and stimulate a new reaction within my perception of both structures and landscape, urban and rural or mixed.
I have always sought to reveal what is not normally perceived by casual observation. By re-examining what the subject is in form, colour and texture my work endeavours to present the unseen aspects of the subject, sometimes by multiple exposures overlaid in semi-transparent layers or by simply the juxtaposition of two or more subjects.
Other studies require the re-composing of the subject matter to create a more interesting image or one that stimulates a greater reaction in the observer. An obviously artificial composition can make the observer re-examine their perception of the original subject.
Sometimes I reconstruct an image by including different time frames which adds a further dimension to the scene.
