If this blog had any purpose, it was to steer my photography down an artist’s route. I’ve never considered myself an artist until I read the book “Art and Fear”. Slowly I’ve been reprogramming my brain into the art world, reading countless books on artists and creativity. To say what differentiates a photographer from an artist I’d be stumped but, I’m beginning to understand. Understanding is one thing, doing another. What I have realised is I need projects, directions, ideas, to create bodies of work.
A friend recently asked me if I planned to do anything with my work. I answered honestly “I’d love a little exhibition” I’d been becoming fascinated with Neolithic sites and thought maybe this could be a cool little project. Recently I went to Avebury with the camera to make a start. This is when reality bit.
Avebury was impressive, resonating with some Eire energy. The problem was, like many things in the cold light of photographic reality, you can't always translate the experience of place with photographic vision. I keep returning to a term that seems doomed for me “psychogeography”. I feel very emotionally affected by places, but the images of the place don’t contain the emotions I felt.
The artist Andrew Wyeth claimed you cannot capture a place with a camera, the act of painting and drawing allows the artist to tread that fine line of what the human psyche and eyes see together, that’s burnt into the emotional memory. What we experience when we see things, probably isn’t the cold mechanical reproduction of the photograph. This brings me to confront something scary, what if photography isn’t a very good art? The more I learn about art the more I feel photography is restricted.
A vision in front of my camera isn’t reframed through my psyche in the same way a painting could be. The day I went to Avebury the light was overcast; I plan to return in the morning light. The question is; what differentiates Avebury’s stones shot in nice light from a strong piece of art that is personal to my vision? I’m sure all landscape photographers say they’re showing their unique vision but often the techniques are formulaic and rely largely on capturing beautiful atmospheric and light effects rather than anything deeply concerned with the psyche.
The following images came out very weird. I remember opening my old camera bag and seeing some Ilford FP4 inside. I thought nothing of it and used roll at Avebury. It turned out really strange, after some internet searches it appears that in 2017 there was a duff batch of FP4 that gave this effect. I've not used my camera bag since 2017/18 so it could be that bad batch, or just so old its screwed. I kind of like it, or maybe i don't and Im pretending to appreciate the "character marks".
While making these images, I admit that I assumed the results would be a failure. Everything I did was unoriginal, nothing felt like Art. I arrived at Avebury mid-morning on an overcast day with all the other visitors. I didn’t have a plan; I didn’t have any direction. I had already decided Psychogeography was a terrible Genre, trying to express the emotional map of a place. I didn’t even spend that much time in deep thought with the stones. It was middle-aged blokes’ Sunday morning stroll with a fancy film camera affair. After all my effort to go down all the rabbit holes of creativity, this was a fucking poor show.
After badly developing and scanning the negatives, I feel something there that speaks to me, a whisper of a direction worth pursuing, something to do with medium format film capturing old stone, as simple as that. After 2 weeks of thinking about various ways to make this groundbreakingly creative, I’ve given up trying. What feels worse, to take the images to the next level of impact; I want better lighting, stormy skies and atmosphere, basically everything in the landscape photographer’s toolkit, not the artist breaking and challenging of that.
Worried of never making a start, of never finding this illusive touch that transcends the landscape photograph into pure Art, I’ve decided to just make bloody start, taking Neolithic sites as a body of work to create images around. Maybe the gods of art will strike whilst I'm mid way through, maybe they won’t. I need to take the Stoic pill, get along being a landscape photographer and quit dreaming.
I do have a few tricks up my sleeve, a desire to capture of sense of place through multiple images. Finally, I have a theme for a body of work that’s all related, and I aim to keep the technicalities consistent. It’s many steps forward than last month, if not the dream project that would go straight into the Tate.
