The all seeing eye
The knot missing from the planks of our back deck is an eye that sees how everything ages and changes. I photographed the same planks on a rainy day in 2000, then half their current age and recently re-stained. The stain has faded, the wood has grayed, the knot has fallen through. A photograph of me then and now would show the same.
Lourdes, outside the gates
It is nearly 30 years since I passed through Lourdes, in south west France, while hitch hiking in the summer after finishing college. I am not Catholic but was struck by the spirit and atmosphere inside the gates of the sanctuary. Outside the gates was another matter. Souvenir shops of the most crass kind lined both sides of the road leading down the hill to the sanctuary entrance. Outside the gates, the modern day money changers leached away any sense of holiness that might have lingered with you as you left the church grounds.
This is my submission to the VFXY Photos theme for the week: Religion. You can see all the submissions to the current VFXY theme at /photos.vfxy.com/themes/.
Pretending it's summer, Hyde Park, London - 1980
They might look like they are at the beach but they were in central London. It might be sunny but it was not summer; each of the deck chair occupants is bundled in a heavy coat. It is a thoroughly British scene.
At least, it was. Britain and the British have changed since 1980 but I stopped experiencing those changes when I left for Texas ten years after this picture was made.
When I lived in Britain I hoped there would be a summer. Now I live in Texas and hope their will be a fall. I am no longer thoroughly British.
Senior couple entering the gloaming
Three years ago I chose not to include this image in the New Mexico 2005 album I placed on the web site; coming across it on the hard drive this weekend I wondered why not?
It might be an allegory of two older people leaving the frame to enter heaven; a Hollywood fade to white. But not with that 1960’s space age picnic table. Or maybe it still is?
Perhaps they argued at this table 40 years ago and just found each other again?
Three Generations
Running eldest to youngest, left to right, these three men are grandfather, father and son. At the time the image was made in 2000, the grandfather was no longer certain to recognize his son; his shadow is the longest.
This is my submission to the VFXY Photos theme for the week: Shadows. You can see all the submissions to the current VFXY theme at /photos.vfxy.com/themes/.
Volleyball referee feet
The image above shows the feet of two referees adjudicating side by side matches of a middle school volleyball tournament. Their job is to enforce the rules of the game; to blow the whistle if lines are crossed. Sometimes they miss a fault or let one slide.
This photograph has been manipulated using Photoshop but only within the limits of my rules.
There are no rules that fine art photographers must obey but many of us define our work in part by the restrictions we place upon ourselves. My self imposed restrictions are these:
These are old fashioned rules but I am only truly comfortable when I keep them. The myth that “photography is truth” is crucial to the images I make. This is not because I wish to share a post-modern joke with the viewer but because I intend the claim that the images are true; their truth being vouched for because “photographs” are pictures of real things that the viewer could have witnessed for themselves.
These are arbitrary rules – I allow digital manipulation to alter color saturation and exposure but I will not remove a wrinkle or pebble, I will turn red into gray but not into blue. The viewer could not actually have witnessed the view presented in the image without colored glass, a telescope and one or more other camera and darkroom tricks. But the form has been preserved, the form would be acknowledged as true.
I break my rules sometimes. The first picture that I ever sold was manipulated to the point of being unrecognizable as a photograph; I doubt the buyer would have known it was not a painting if the dealer had not told them. But if I do that too often I fear that I will undermine the myth of photographic truth that I rely on for the rest of the work. I cross the line occasionally but retreat quickly back.
