Statement

Since Autumn 2002, I changed the way the images are made so that the centre of the image in the viewfinder of the camera is not edited when printing. This is important as the line of vision remains through the process of getting the camera's virtual digital information to the print via the computer screen. The new work from this year 2004, is getting closer to what I want from the 'photographic' print. Importantly, I'm trying to lose the photoness or windowness of the image in favour of graphicness. The meanings associated with the work are somewhat the same as the highly edited work previously shown here, in that I'm still trying to show the image in relation to absolute black whether it's the obscured centre or the edge. The black and white work goes someway to bridge the gap between the conte black of my old drawings and the new possibility of realising an absolute theoretical digital black in the prints. I suppose I'm still struggling with the process of representing what it's like to see, even through a piece of filtering technology like a camera. I have serious philosophical problems with the camera being used as an agent to create a 'window on the world'; the shiny, clear, sharp images we're all used to in photographic prints. It has become a bit of a dogma and a very tedious convention to pretend the photo has no objectness. So strong is this convention that when photos are printed are printed on, say, hand made paper, we tend to think the photos are trying to be something else, a 'drawing' or 'painting'. The new black and white work also presents the images as circular fields of vision embedded in black and not rectangular views edited by the camera and the edge of the paper. The work is a process of getting back to the nitty gritty of photography from a painters point of view and getting away from the dreary slickness that is modern photographic practice".

amrit row  jan 2004

Read also Recent photographs 2002-5, a statement - September 2005