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feetabout
something happens when you stand , feet together and your camera at your sternum area, pointing at spots you wish to photograph. it is unusual behavior and crowds notice this. some will pose for you and others turn away. i don't focus on details when i feetabout, thinking more of the composition and what part i want to fit together later when at my computer. and it is there when the details begin to appear. someone leaning in to whisper to someone in a club, the person passing who turns their neck to watch what you are doing. all beautiful details of life on the street. and you notice how many are watching you back. sometimes i think of it as a performance, those few minutes where i chose to stand and take bits of time to create the whole of that moment.
feetabout gave me a cover to stand out while also observing and i am just us much a part of this street performance as those being photographed.
about
feet
i saw an exhibition by Henri Cartier-Bresson in the late 90's in london. i remember the reviews saying how you didn't have to crop any of the images as he had composed the shot perfectly. i kept wondering what lay just out of sight on the edge, un-captured. a lot of photographic exhibitions i saw at the time dealt with issues that i don't read so much of anymore. the perfect shot and the responsibility of the photographer to take a shot or be it as a witness to events. somehow instagram seems to have dealt with those concerns.
in 2002 i spent a year in australia and fruit picked for 9 months of them. on my return to the UK i thought a lot about aboriginal art, especially after the dreamtime explanation that eddie gave me. late one night i was watching a documentary on aboriginal art and it suddenly struck me that if you suspended a camera far above the ground, pointing down at the ground. and if you took a shot say every 10min for a few hours and then layered them on top of each other, so that tracks of animals crossed over others, then you would have a time delay photographic version of an aboriginal painting. that idea fascinated me. the idea of space and time being painted rather western form.
i had bought a SLR camera in new york in 1997 but it was stolen on millennium eve, from my backpack whilst on the embankment for the fireworks. it took me another 9 years before i would have another.
in 2009 during a band rehearsal one night I was overwhelmed by trying to capture what was in front of me and created my first photo montage with my nokia phone. I soon bought an Lx3 and thought a lot about how i was trying to lay fragments of time down to compose an overall image. much as i had seen in the aboriginal paintings i had seen. it was a way of mixing street photography whilst playing with the idea of not only being a witness but actively within the image, composing it and by seeing people stiffen as they approached me , i riealised that i was having an affect on them.
feetabout become a stepping stone to painting. in 2015 i took a number of prints and stuck them up on church walls and public squares around spain. i handed out magnifying glasses to those that stopped and in doing so i realised i had said all i wanted to say with photography. 16 months later i started painting.
somerset house
london 2010
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badalona, barcelona
2015
Valencia
2015
