Exploring the vast scale of the modern city to find images that connect with the images in his minds eye
"My photographic work has arisen directly out of my researches as an art educator documenting the universal themes 'in the locality'. The modern cityscape rapidly became my favoured subject though, and in New York I found myself naturally bringing together within single images environments, the abstract and the fantastic and strange. These three themes, invariably in combination, have subsequently predominated in virtually all of my work.
On my first visit to The Lowry, when it was newly opened, I immediately responded to this same fusion of elements. This area of Salford had always appealed to me; I used to sketch there as an art student when it was still a busy shipping port. Later, in the 70's, I had numerous exhibitions of paintings and drawings of the ships' superstructures and masts as well as bridges and canal architecture of the Manchester Ship Canal along its length as far as the Runcorn Bridge.
On first seeing The Lowry, and immediate part of its appeal were the many reminders of this maritime history reflected in its architectural forms and structures like the pulley towers on the adjacent bridge. (In 'Open Windows', The Lowry building strongly resembles the superstructure and funnel of a ship sailing away from us!) I have subsequently regularly visited the Lowry and its immediate environs, situated within minutes of where I live. The nature of my responses to this stimulus has` made photography the ideal medium for what I wanted to say. However, with my fine art background, I feel I approach photography with the eye and mind of a painter.
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'Organic Forms' |
'Mori Art gallery' |
While photographing, I love designing and composing through the viewfinder. Ultimately, though, the act of photographing fails to satisfy me. An important part of my work therefore involves the subsequent act of creating 'new' works that come about by combining two or more photographs. These might lead to the literal extension of, say a façade but sometimes result in the creation of 'new' environments that only exist in reality in disparate fragments. At first I made these works by simply placing two photographs edge to edge, sometimes linking them with a hand painted central section. I still find these methods fruitful and satisfactory (e.g. 'Surveillance', 2006), but a whole body of work has also been produced by imperceptibly joining images together on the computer, (e.g. 'Diamonds'), but with as little reliance as possible on digital manipulation.
I still use film, as opposed to a digital camera. Pixillated effects multiply with each reflective layer of glass. A close scrutiny of some of these areas can reveal almost pointillist effects at times. To my mind, these animate and enliven the picture surface in a manner that is right and appropriate for the content and subject matter of much of my work. By comparison, the smoothness that results from pixilation-free digital photography seems cold and lifeless to me, and irons out aspects of mood and atmosphere I feel are essential to my work.
To facilitate the use of the computer, though, each film is also put on disc at the developing stage. A vital part of the process then involves composing with 9" by 6" prints, experimenting by placing them edge to edge or by overlapping them as appropriate. Each idea is therefore clearly crystallized prior to using the computer, though the computer processes that follow inevitably lead to further refinements and nuances of design.
A lifelong commitment to critical studies strongly underpins my work. There are obvious links with artists whose works I purchased for the Wigan Schools Loan Collection from the mid-1970s onwards - artists like Gerd Winner and Brendan Neiland. However, I acknowledge an almost kaleidoscopic influence of a myriad of artists across time and place, ranging from early Renaissance and Gothic triptychs, through Caravaggio and Piranese, to late C19th and C20th art movements such as pointillism, surrealism and futurism. These influences manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways ranging across the full spectrum of content, form, process and mood. "
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