Notes:

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The photograph missed,

 

A moment ignored, passed by, forgotten, allowed, chased or protected. The nature of photography, of an image captured in a split second means that even we, a group of people chasing a career in this very medium, may miss. Like a sharp shooter we move through our environment with a finger on a trigger, awake, noticing, looking, seeing for the first time, understanding and then with a minute movement, capturing forever. So what happens when we miss? We capture something else, some other version, a misinterpreted version, a second too late but worlds apart.

 

A photograph is for a photographer, for me, a way to lay claim, to prove, to assert, to take part, it’s a way to control what cannot be controlled, it’s a way to relate to a constantly moving world, a way to make it stand still, to show it’s beauty, to see. So when we miss those moments they become their own thing. They aren’t what we intended, they represent a mistake on our part, a poor prediction, too slow, wrong settings, wrong composition or not bold enough, all of which simply states the need for practice and space for growth. They are faces blurred, landscapes transformed, rooms suddenly cold, busses made dark and protests made meek. They are lives un-documented, smiles lost, tears dried and anger dissipated.

 

More interesting however, at least to me that is, are the moments when the photographer does not act, when an image is allowed to pass by, a moment set free, left unclaimed. A moment too precious, too powerful, too dangerous, volatile, a moment of peace, a moment that triggers the photographers desire to capture, but rather than render it on film or megabyte it is enough to simply remember, to commit to memory, to allow it to pass by unclaimed and un-flattened. Something beautiful, something personal, a moment a photograph would shatter, a moment the photographer has no desire to step outside of yet cannot ignore.

 

These are the moments where I understand what it is to be a photographer, how it has shaped me, how it has altered the way I interact with the world for the better. These are the moments I miss.

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When it comes to how I install my work I find I have a really loose presentation style - by that I mean I’m not precious about my prints anymore. I think because I came to photography via sculpture and a period of artistic experimentation (a period of time where just going hell for leather at a material was the process) I find it really difficult to go through the creative process (something so free and messy and, try this, try that, a process that demands the freedom to make mistakes, to have imperfections) and then take the result of that into a pristine white space and put on gloves and use lasers to put identical frames equidistant to the millimetre at eye level on the wall and a 150 word summary to the left. I want the way I present to mirror both the work and the process, it comes from me. 

 

I don’t like frames, they shut photos up, they make them quiet, they remove them from the group and make it about the one and not the collective. My work’s about putting across an idea, a feeling, a comment and that can so rarely be shown in one subjective print. The work needs to connect to the other prints, to the other material in the collective show. I don’t like framing my work because putting that box around them puts a border on it, it cages the implications of that image within that image, it prevents flow and conversation between the prints on the wall for me. 

 

I am not rigid, I’m not precious, my artwork isn’t either, its about ideas and conversation it’s not something to be flattened and made still. if my work can’t shout over a bad install, if it needs a crutch of the pristine then it’s failed, it isn’t enough.

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I believe that we lack a definitive truth. Everything has become polarised and whilst complexity is inevitable, without true open discussion leading toward a hopeful conclusion progress cannot be made. All too often in debate today battle lines are drawn, people are divided and objective conversation between supposed opposite parties is never achieved. People are only driven further apart and into extreme views. It's my hope that documentary photography can be a bridge, can stimulate that objective, truth-bound conversation.

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I know the photos, there are stories that come with each one. Do I write these down? have them as a hand held book to go through. I fall for the people in the shots, for the composition. The excitement you have when you get to talk about the work. Can I show the viewer that with my own voice?

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My photography is about shedding light on the world around us. My work is concerned with humanity. Using photography to go out into the world, taking photos and bringing them back into an art setting - a place for thought. Displacing a moment in time, taking something seemingly unimportant and making it crucial. I use photography as a medium because I don’t want the viewer to become bogged down in the artistic license, i want to communicate something about the world and photos are inherently mired in truth. I choose to shoot street photography because I believe we need to see the world around us more. I believe there is art in everyday life and in a world so divided and confused street photography offers a chance to freeze a moment, to make all it contains imperative and push the viewer to think on the good in life - I want to bring the world into a space for thought. 

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what do I want them to be?

I want them to show: 

Vulnerability, 

intimacy, 

humanity, 

I want them to be honest. 

I want to speak to the turbulent time that we live in but not by showing conflict. 

I don’t necessarily want to document events or stories. 

I want the figure to be without context, 

i like the sense of the unknowable about the characters i shoot. 

I feel that shooting the less fortunate or indeed the more fortunate as contrast is a very overplayed card. 

I want to depict the everyman in his reality. 

show the chaos of human society and the order we carve out for ourselves. 

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Photography takes the known and the unknowable and flips them on their head in a way that simply being there and watching the behaviours and patterns unfold can never reveal. Enabling you to separate a moment in time and take it away with you, removing past and future, context and identity (creating a void that once noticed is fascinating in it’s violation) but adding order, showing things in their ‘rightful place’, composing separate elements and sandwiching them together in a way that can never be truly repeated or undone.

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Something that I've come across and written about previously in my Reflective Journal is an attitude towards Photography that seems to see it as something less that purebred 'Art' and whilst i've covered the subject in relation to other topics going into my third year, I'm bound to come across this question at some point in person and so in this blog I plan on composing my answer to just such a question.

The only difference that I can see between a photo of, say a landscape, or a painting of the same landscape at a photographic level is presumably the illusion of effort or thought that the artist who made the painting has put in to their work. In today's artistic world are we really going to say that physical effort is the thing which makes one piece more worthy than another? 

Ignoring the physical effort that a photographer might put in lugging equipment out to location and configuring everything to the correct settings, are we going to say for example that If I hand chiselled the same image into solid lead (no doubt exerting a huge amount of physical effort) would that make it more of a piece of art work than say a drawing of that image? 

 

One might say then that it isn't necessarily the physical effort that makes the work but rather the thought process or additional level of personal perspective that the artist gives us with a painting or piece of work in a different medium.

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As for thought I (a photographer) demonstrate the same level of deliberation through my composition of the world around me, with any editing and framing that do, how I control the lighting and time elements of the image, how I eventually frame and produce my final print and what accompanies it. The true unseen work of the photographer is in the control that is wielded over the image that is eventually produced. Perhaps that control is often unseen because in today's world where pretty much every digital camera or smart phone comes with automatic settings and inbuilt photography editing has become a medium of the masses. Whilst film photography remains an area where a certain level of skill and knowledge is required it would be rather hypocritical of me to state that this makes film more worthwhile or artistic than any other image produced. 

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All of this leads me to a certain conclusion about my definition of art. If I see photography as a form of artwork (which I do) and if I believe everything I've said above (which I obviously also do) then it tells me something about what 'Art' must be. In the past year my ideas have changed alot, I now have to see 'Art' as not something you can point at or something which has to have a conversation or an obvious message, in fact I don't really see artwork as anything at all anymore but rather as a way of evaluating an object, a way of thinking or frame of mind.

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I began to think of the photo as something more than just ink on a page, the camera as doing something greater than just capturing an image or a likeness but truly stealing a moment, taking a slice of time and space and being able to transport that. With this idea in mind my street photography becomes something fascinating to observe. No longer simply a depiction of life it becomes a piece of it, akin to a found object or even a kind of doorway back into that moment, that reality. These ideas changed how I looked at photography, changed the worth that I saw in an image and changed how I wanted to display my photos. So when It came to presenting my Protest piece the idea of framing those images, those moments, not only seemed like a wasted opportunity but almost abhorrent to enclose that which is depicted within a frame. A consideration has to be made for what is depicted within the images, so for the protest piece the idea of trapping such an important, complex moment behind a pane of glass and thin wooden walls seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what that protest had been. It wasn’t a rigid, organized, clean moment it was a messy, angry, over riding swell of people and emotion, opinion and personality. To frame that would be to call an end to it. To put a full stop on something which has (in the minds of those there) only just begun. – Extract from Reflective Journal written as part of BA hons in Fine Art

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I am an artist. I make art, I believe in art. I grew up with an artist for a Dad. I’ve been exposed to art since I was small. For me though I always came up against the same question when looking at art. “what is it for” this is a question that sits at the very centre of my practice. It has since I was in sixth form and it’s a question I’ve wrestled with again and again with my work. I always come back to one idea; art to me is a method of communication, a wonderful undiluted unconstrained way of putting a story, message, opinion or statement across to a viewer. It’s a tool and I hated to see it squandered. My work took on a social element quite early on, like a lot of sixth form students I looked heavily into homelessness with my work at that stage. At University my practice changed constantly, it became sculptural, delicate, brutal, 3D, layered and finally photographic. All the way through though I struggled with the question of what my work was for, what did it achieve, what did it say. Because I was determined that it would say something. It must be for something.

 

Photography for me became the perfect way to communicate. It held none of the distractions that painting, drawing, sculpture and so on might hold. It wasn’t concerned with my every brushstroke or particular talent. There was skill involved but being a medium so readily used it wasn’t what people saw when they looked at an image. All they saw was what it contained, how it was positioned. They saw what it was for