Sunday, December 13, 2009

Another Day


With the passion of the italian photographer Italo Calvino in 'the adventures of a photographer' i set out yesterday and this morning to photograph something from life.
I drove around 40 miles, the day was dry , the light lovely. I was listening to music and looking,being open to something that I might line up with my head and my heart and camera.
but despite the time and space to do so i either drove in the wrong direction or perhaps driving itself was the mistake.
my car was loaded up with gear from digital cameras to Mamiya RZ and 5x4 Wista.
Recently i saw some things i wanted to photograph but i choose to find out or try to discover new one rather than go back to these sites.
I realise this is a crazy way to practice but i trusted the instinct "shooting from the gut" and i was open to discovering something
but it was not to be on these occasions.

Musings on the creative process


I sometimes feel trying to understand the photograph is impossible,its promise to truth , while at the same time being a kind of fiction and promises to fix life but offers us only an images of our own mortality- its like trying to catch mercury,
so i am trying to both understand both my own thoughts and something as complex as the photograph!

I think sometimes photographers are working in the area of the sub conscious , not really knowing why they are making images but its revealed to them later on perhaps.
I see a lot of work in the ma that reflects something about the interior of the person even if thats not understood by them or by us(the viewer) just yet.

next i will go and work with passion on "whatever interests me" from now till 5th January and see where that takes me!

Best
mike

Friday, November 27, 2009

Painted from Memory (MA Project)





Painted from memory is a sort of portrait of a disappointment.
for awhile I was obsessed with ideas of love and longing.
I knew I could find my future major project by thinking through these
universal themes in art , music and writing.
I spent lovely afternoons in Dublin's National Gallery looking at work by
Murilllo and Rembrandt,plus Edward Munch.
I listened to Martin Hayes and Joni Mitchell, Tindersticks and Nick Cave.

"Trouble lies in sullen pools along the road I've taken
Sightless windows stare the empty street
No love beckons me save that which I've forsaken
The anguish of my solitude is sweet."

I began with an idea about a photographer who looses the love of a women, he has no photograph of her, so he tries to create one, using another woman as his model.
He has to paint her from memory.
He cannot either remember or forget her, without a photograph.
I was interested in how things far from us can be desirable. 
James Elkins writes in the object stares back, that ʻthe allure increases with
the distanceʼ I think thats true.

There's gotta be a record of you someplace
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown - a picture of your face
Your injured looks
The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street.





The journey's longer than
I thought my love
There's lots of things
Get in the way
But every time I think of you
You just steal my heart away

Just like the sunshine after rain
I'll come
To be with you will save the day
'Cos I know
When I'm with you again
You just steal my heart away

From Van Morrison steal my heart away



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