Personal Statement 2022

I am a photographer and artist based in Cambridge, UK. My professional life as global consultant in participatory development in Africa, Asia and Latin America is very intense. I see stunningly beautiful scenery – both ‘wild natural’ remote environments and managed rural and urban landscapes. I also see shocking examples of environmental degradation, waste and poverty.

Part the my motivation in my landscape photography is therefore political. Photography as a referential image, or series of images, can raise questions about the complexities, contradictions and challenges in the ‘real world’ in a way that other types of art do not.  ‘Landscapes’ are multi-layered, changing and often manipulated in attempts to shape power relationships between people and groups of people and peoples’ control over and use of ‘nature’ and other resources. ‘Simple images’ are generally inadequate to sustain attention in the deluge of ‘compassion/guilt fatigue’. I am interested in how to make visual messages understandable without oversimplifying from any one particular standpoint. In structuring and juxtaposing information to inspire people to want to think things through for themselves.

In order to attract and sustain attention I am also concerned about aesthetics and design, and underlying feelings and meanings – flashes of light darting across layers of reflection, fascination with transition states and half-glimpsed images as the brain attempts to make sense of random patterns and sensations.  I am particularly interested in the power of suggestion and the process of abstraction and the degree to which images can be simplified in different ways for different effects and still remain readable to the viewer.

In my photography I am not aiming at any one style or type of output. I like exploring both more journalistic and abstract fine art styles, colour and monochrome, and different ways of processing and presenting images. As a process of increasing my own understanding, and finding different ways of communicating to a wide range of different audiences.

Above all my photography is also a process of self-questioning, examining and trying to articulate my own responses and thoughts about what I see. Exploration of different ways of photographing, and different post-photographic interpretation and representation is also a way of examining and broadening my own understanding of a complex world, and my own place in it. And hopefully communicating my sense of wonder, sometimes anger, but above all questions about the only world we have.

Artist’s Statement to accompany Assignment 5

I am a photographer and artist based in Cambridge, UK. My professional life as global consultant in participatory development in Africa, Asia and Latin America is very intense. I see stunningly beautiful scenery – both ‘wild natural’ remote environments and managed rural and urban landscapes. I also see shocking examples of environmental degradation, waste and poverty.

Part the my motivation in my landscape photography is therefore political. Photography as a referential image, or series of images, can raise questions about the complexities, contradictions and challenges in the ‘real world’ in a way that other types of art do not.  ‘Landscapes’ are multi-layered, changing and often manipulated in attempts to shape power relationships between people and groups of people and peoples’ control over and use of ‘nature’ and other resources. ‘Simple images’ are generally inadequate to sustain attention in the deluge of ‘compassion/guilt fatigue’. I am interested in how to make visual messages understandable without oversimplifying from any one particular standpoint. In structuring and juxtaposing information to inspire people to want to think things through for themselves.

In order to attract and sustain attention I am also concerned about aesthetics and design, and underlying feelings and meanings – flashes of light darting across layers of reflection, fascination with transition states and half-glimpsed images as the brain attempts to make sense of random patterns and sensations.  I am particularly interested in the power of suggestion and the process of abstraction and the degree to which images can be simplified in different ways for different effects and still remain readable to the viewer.

In my photography I am not aiming at any one style or type of output. I like exploring both more journalistic and abstract fine art styles, colour and monochrome, and different ways of processing and presenting images. As a process of increasing my own understanding, and finding different ways of communicating to a wide range of different audiences.

Above all my photography is also a process of self-questioning, examining and trying to articulate my own responses and thoughts about what I see. Exploration of different ways of photographing, and different post-photographic interpretation and representation is also a way of examining and broadening my own understanding of a complex world, and my own place in it. And hopefully communicating my sense of wonder, sometimes anger, but above all questions about the only world we have.

Assessment of my artist’s statement

I decided to use the first person, and focus mostly on what I am trying to achieve in my landscape photography rather than my art and photography more widely. Using this also as a way of re-thinking what I might be trying to achieve with the different presentations of the images from Kyrgyzstan.

The current version is too long and flowery.  I am still in the process of thinking things through. I want to have something much shorter, then more informative overviews of different series – like the example of Michael Tsegaye. But I am not yet at that level of understanding of where I am going yet.

Resources:

What is an artist’s statement?

The Artist Statement (UCA)

Zemni Artist Statement for Illustration

Zemni Artist Statement for Printmaking

TASK: To help develop your personal voice as an independent practitioner, it is important to acknowledge your subjective attitude towards the subjects you’re researching and photographing. Right now you’re dealing with themes around landscape.

Write an entry in your learning log (around 300 words) reflecting on any current and previous circumstances and experiences that you think may influence, or may have influenced, your view of the landscape. Describe how you think these factors might inform your ideas about landscape photography or related themes. If you’re stuck, consider the following:
• Did where you grew up / spent time whilst growing up influence your view of the landscape?
• What sorts of engagement have you had with the landscape? Leisure? Work? Negative or traumatic experiences?
• Are there any social or political issues that particularly concern you in relation to the landscape?

I grew up on the outskirts of Manchester. Although I could see the sunrise over the hills of the Peak District from my bedroom window, my father was generally out and my mother preferred to go shopping at weekends, so visits there were only once or twice a year on large family summer picnics to gather bilberries. And from the car window on the frequent visits to family in Bradford and Yorkshire – where the world was particularly magical at night with all the stars, and in the snow at Xmas.

I went to school in the middle of Manchester and so lived a long way from my school friends. My main companion was a cocker spaniel called Kim, and when he was run over by a lorry, by Jason his replacement springer spaniel. With these dogs for company I was relatively free to go for walks on my own through the pathways and horse fields just down the road from our house. Those places were bot magical – early morning dew, sunsets and many different types of bird. But also rather scary, with periodic reports of murders that worried my mother. So going out in the countryside became also an act of defiance and bravery against a world that seemed to conspire to make women and children victims of a violent unknown. I was not exactly scared of people (generally men) I met on my walks, but I saw them as a nuisance, something I should be wary of and avoid.

As an adult in Cambridge my connection with dogs and walking continued. This time in the much safer and tamer countryside with winding rivers and reflections in water. But again, it was really the peace and quiet I wanted. Though it was more common to meet women on their own, not only men. So I started to see people more as possible kindred spirits rather than people to avoid – except during the years of the Cambridge rapist when country walks on my own continued to be heightened with adrenaline rush. As soon as I could I got a big dog, so the freedom could be enjoyed in relative peace, except when I was busy trying to get the dog back from chasing rabbits or swimming across the river to chase another dog or the swans.

Nowadays I still live by the same Cambridge river I have walked for the past 30 years. There have been very many changes. The area was traditionally where ‘lower classes’ employed in Cambridge or local farms were housed, with large council estates for ‘problem families’ as well as private semi-detached housing. Large new estates were built in the 1990s as council house tenants also bought and sold their houses. Much of the very recent influx has been of middle class and more affluent people working in the Cambridge Science Park who (like me) want a healthier lifestyle and like the cycle ride into town and river walks. This is likely to increase with the new station at the end of the Cambridge to London line in May 2017. Tensions with the traveller community down the road have become markedly more tense since Brexit. The place is now quite crowded and much of the empty space has been built on – an example now of suburban living rather than rural outskirts. No longer a wild place to escape to, but a tamer friendlier place looking with new cycle routes to the fens far beyond….This is the area I am working on in my project Transitions.

From the age of 18 I  started to travel a lot, first to Asia (Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan) and later to Central America and Africa. My first travels as a student were on a very low budget, often hitch-hiking. Later as an anthropologist I lived for long periods in quite remote villages. I saw the countryside both as an outsider in all its beauty, also as an insider guest – a place of snakes and scorpions and mosquitoes and where one should not go around at night because of bandits (or gossip about impropriety as a woman). Now when I travel for work I have more money, generally travelling by car with local people and development workers, and staying in hotels in urban areas or a very honoured temporary guest in villages.  I still get to know local people well as friends. But I have much less time outside my core work to explore, so my views these days of ‘landscapes’ and photographic opportunities are more as a tourist. It is the conflicting views and my own conflicting reactions about the countryside seen from a car that I explore in Assignment 4 ‘safari’ and work on travel books and on-line slideshows for Assignment 5.