This, for me, is an apt description of a photograph. A frozen moment in time, which is neither truth nor lie. A moment that becomes a memory of what we thought was reality. A 'memento mori', a reminder of the transient nature of all things, including ourselves. This ability to stop time is unique, a point of resonance of our existence in a constantly moving life, where there is no past or future, only 'now'. By its nature, a photograph is fragmentary, a small slice of the world taken out of context and time, causing even very 'honest' depictions of scenes to become abstractions. While this could seem to be quite limiting, this freezing of time has an undeniable magic, one which is addictive to both photographer and viewer.
My own approach to taking photographs has long been an instinctive one, a response to my surroundings rather than a wish to record those surroundings in a specific way. I photograph from the gut, trusting that feeling inside implicitly, releasing the shutter only when my stomach tightens upon viewing a scene. I can pinpoint my 'eureka' moment when this way of working first occurred, and I've tried very hard to put my trust in that method ever since. The idea of narrative or structure comes later, once a collection of images comes together it often starts to tell me its own story. Its important though that this story or narrative remains somewhat elusive, as I find the viewers interaction with my work very important. People bring an extra dimension to the photographs, they complete the narrative in a way that's unique to them, each time a new person views an image, it creates a new story, and this is fascinating to me. The internal conversation people have with my work is as important as my contribution in taking the photograph to begin with.
The work collected here is from various projects, some complete and some ongoing, and work from my wanders around various cities and towns. All of the images shown are available as prints, or as complete or 'part' collections for exhibition, please contact me for details.
Thank you for taking the time to look at my work.