My Approach to Photography
I believe art should be affordable. Many "fine art" photographers sell fairly pedestrian landscapes to wealthy people as decorations for their home. The images go up on the wall as part of the "staging" of the home without much consideration for artistic merit or even interest by the owner. They often cost thousands of dollars. Collecting prints should be an activity most people can engage in.
I believe people should be actively engaged with photographs, a belief inspired by woodblock artist David Bull's contention that we pictures hung on the wall fade into the background as we get used to their presence. He creates sets of woodblock prints, which are boxed and sold in series, so the owner must physically make an effort to remove the images from their box, handle them, look at them close up in order to appreciate them. Getting the images out of the box makes it a special occasion, long remembered, and brings the viewer into close physical proximity and interaction with the image. By storing prints in a box, it remains fresh when the occasion comes to bring it out again, perhaps gather around the prints to examine them closely and talk about them.
Much of the intrinsic interest and experience of a photograph is physical. Each print should be sized to viewed by an individual, held in the hand, close to the eye. Photographs do not have to be large to engross the viewer. The feel of paper grain on the hand. The smell of paper. These are all part of the photographic experience.
In traditional photography, paper is not just a support for the image in a gelatin sliver print, but an integral part of the image, providing substance and weight to the almost ephemeral image, pure whites against which the clouds of silver float in counterpoint. Even in the digital age, I believe it is still important to continue making prints.
The photographs in the series are printed directly onto 500gsm paper stock. I believe photographs should be physically handled and viewed close up. This avoids the necessity for mounting the print to a backing board, which is not archival and creates other problems.
This is as close to a "manifesto" as I come in presenting my approach to art photography.
