Square Mile
Based on a concept in Welsh Culture – the intimate connection between people and their childhood ‘home’ surroundings.
The Welsh project aimed to make school pupils observant and interested in their surroundings by encouraging them to observe the structures and spaces around them, to consider the relationships between people and place and to think about the environmant is shaped and managed.
 The brief to create a series of 6-12 images that:-
- complement one another
- collectively communicate an idea
They should reveal something of my interests, motivations and ambitions in terms of photography.
- my interests – reflection, shadow and the concept of trace. If a photograph itself is considered to be a trace – the capture of a moment in time – then how can photographs capture evidence of my existence as I pass through a given space ? The relationship between space and time ( Francesa Woodman) .
- my motivation – is to learn as much as I can about fine art photography and to continue to experiment  – creatively and technically.
- my ambition – is to produce excellent stand-alone fine art images.
A couple of years ago, I discovered Lee Miller. I found her life story inspirational and her work interesting, and it sparked a curiosity in the Surrealists of the mid 20th Century, Man Ray in particular. The concept of photography as the medium of Surrealists appealed to me.
At the same time, an interest in architecture led me to examine the use of architectural metaphors in art, and especially in Surrealist photography. Minor White used architectural metaphors to great effect within his so-called ‘straight’ photography.
Jerry Uelsmann also included architectural elements in his work, though he developed sophisticated double exposure techniques and post-production editing to create the surreal results.
John Stezaker adopted a similar approach in his Landscapes series, effectively combining  traditional portrait photography with strategically positioned landscape images.
Whilst some contemporary artists use advanced digital technology to create very sophisticated results, others achieve complex intricate works using straight photography – i.e without significant post-production manipulation, but by composing an image creatively at the point of capture.
The German artist, Sabine Hornig, uses reflection in glass in large highstreet windows to produce multi-dimensional images.
Also using windows, but rather through the window of a domestic property, Uta Barth challenges the viewer to examine the view beyond the glass.
When considering artists who combined the use of glass and reflective surfaces in self portrait work, Vivian Maier was inspirational. She made more than 150,000 exposures over a thirty year period from the late 1940s, many of which were self portraits. Reflective surfaces and glass permeate all of her work. Her surroundings are glimpsed through frames, doorways and boxes and her shadows projected onto others’ lives, onto pavements and onto the backs of strangers.
In the 1960s, Lee  Friedlander adopted a very similiar approach to his self-portrait photography.
Both artists create intricate images that reveal information about the artist, their immediate surroundings, and the relationship between the two.  What appeals to me is the way in which they both compose images that merely allude to self – the viewer is left to decipher the details and form their own view about the subject.
In the 1970s, Francesca Woodman had skilfully used architectural metaphors to embellish her images of self. She played with the juxtaposition of space and time as she captured her images to great effect, without post-production enhancements and long before digital manipulation was even conceived. It was her work that evoked my interest in the concept of trace.
My Sketchbook
Some of my work on reflection and trace, to date:-
Self-portraits 2016
ByLovekin 