Age twelve my grandmother bought me a bicycle, to go to school.
I borrowed my parent’s box camera and cycled off.
The world opened up.
I have been on the move ever since.
Looking around.
Going places.
Seeing the land.
Watching the land.
Observing the land.
Onwards and upwards.
Considering the land.
Studying the land.
Perceiving the land.
It is an addiction; some would say a vocation.
It is not a choice; it is a life long compulsion.
To photograph the land, trying to understand how our environment shapes us and in return how we shape our environment.
Age sixty and I haven’t gotten off that bike yet!
Still Looking.
Still watching.
Still seeing.
Dignity in the landscape.
My biggest fear is not seeing any longer!
Being metaphorically blind.
Unnerving.
A work in progress!
Not Known - But Seen | Not Known - But Loved.
A photographic series of portraits spanning a thirty year plus period.
Children, young adults, their children, looking into the camera looking to the viewer.
Isolated from the mayhem, isolated in the frame, isolated to create a feeling of quietness, introspection and contemplation.
My aim is to portray the total absorption of my models in their own reality and to offer a twenty-first century image of the stillness and exclusion as seen in the great Italian and Dutch portraits of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Once upon a time on the West Coast of Ireland there was a family.
Ordinary people, ordinary lives.
Not the grinding despair of the poor nor the intoxicating glamour of the rich!
An average family.
Normal people!
The drama of the ordinary celebrated.
I have chosen a middle class family because of their very ordinariness; their lack of extremes. They do not have the dramatic visual props off the very poor or very rich. Consequently the dynamic of the image depends on me, the photographer.
Thirty odd years ago before the eventual wave of immigrants, a foreign man arrived on the west coast of Ireland and finding acceptance in a family there, he immediately started to photograph their lives
I am participating, looking, seeing, imagining and taking photographs.
Even though it is not my intention every photograph is also a record of a person, a time & a place.
My Fiction - My Family!
THE HIGH VIEW | pursuing nature | TOURISM REGARDED
The narrative of our times demands that artists deal with concerns regarding immigration, disadvantaged groups, precarious living conditions, gender relations, oppressed peoples, war and or climate change.
Of course these are all honourable and important topics
However I prefer to focus on an aspect of our society that is more particular for many people and a subject most people can relate to; tourism!
At some point we all are tourists and for instance go to the Alps for our holidays.
The impact of tourism, particularly the impact it has on the landscape of the mountain regions of Central Europe interest me very much.
The Alps are were urban people go to play, indulge their fantasies and relax.
Tourism has altered the landscape of the Alps dramatically. Without tourism there would be almost no economic base for living and or working in the mountains.
The Alps are more accessible than ever before. Through railways, roads, tunnels and a variety of cable cars every corner and mountaintop is now, more than ever before in any season easily within reach of the tourist.
We think about the Alps as lovely and benign.
Actually they can be dangerous, inhospitable and hostile.
I look at all these developments with admiration, criticism, indignation, wonder and desire.
I, the photographer, the artist and the tourist.
My photographs are taken with an analogue 4x5” large format camera.
Which is a time consuming, slow and meditative process.
THE HIGH VIEW | pursuing nature | TOURISM REGARDED
The photographs seldom have an unequivocal subject.
A LANDSCAPE OF LEISURE
The images are about space, how it is experienced in the physical, visual,
literal and abstract.
A SUBLIME LANDSCAPE
The objects, be they houses, trees or mountains define and enclose rather
then occupy the space.
A FANTASY LANDSCAPE
NATURE AS ENTERTAINMENT
Focusing on the landscape, urban, rural and remote.
How the social, cultural and historical development of the Alps shapes
the physical landscape.
NATURE AS PLAYGROUND
A ROMANTIC LANDSCAPE
A non-narrative perception of the world.
A POETIC LANDSCAPE
Quiet, slow, meditative.
A DEADLY LANDSCAPE
Total absorption in the experience.
A MYTHICAL LANDSCAPE
THE EPIC VIEW | nature uncovered | TOURISM PERCEIVED
To give the mundane its beautiful due
Household Detritus, Commercial Debris and Abundant Litter!
Provocative beauty
Love of looking
Love for seeing
Love for looking
Love of seeing
Love to look
Love to see
Trivial objects photographed.
Dead tulips, plastic bottles, scouring pads, cups, vases, pots.
Plastic lace tablecloths, peeled lemons, watermelons.
You name it
The detritus, the debris, the litter, the everything!
Daily lives
Future waste
We have so much!
You would almost think:
These objects are important!
The objects often feel neglected.
Bought, used, hanging around.
Thrown out!
I give the objects attention.
The attention they deserve.
I make the objects bigger.
More important.
To emphasise our dependency.
Both practical and aesthetic.
Practically in our daily routines.
Aesthetically by their shape and colour.
Witnessing our uncontrolled weakness and love.
For the artificial.
The photos are staged, but not forced.
Ordinary and extraordinary!
What do we see?
With how much attention do we look?
An artwork is a proposal.
An unanswered question.
Even for the maker.
There comes a time when ‘stuff ‘.
Loses its ordinariness.
Acquires different meanings.
Becomes something else.
Bigger, better, more mysterious, abstract!
A play of light and dark.
Colour and texture.
Scale, volumes and voids.
Spaces which can be filled.
With content.
How we find happiness in the multitude of trivial objects.
Nearly drowning in the plastic soup of our existence.
The provocative beauty of tulips and plastic bottles.
Takes us out of our daily drudgery.
Allowing us to celebrate life.
Visual promise
The restless and relentless search for images!
Images telling the story of my travels.
Always hoping and expecting the next best photograph will be just around the corner.
And indeed sometimes it is.
Quite often it is not.
But never give up!
Onward and upward
The temporary Glacier
During the summer of 2019 I was artist in residence @ Artbellwald Switzerland.
The residency gave me the opportunity to visit the high mountains of the Jungfrau - Aletsch region, a Unesco world heritage site.
I spent many hours walking the trails looking at the scenery, thinking and photographing the mountains and glaciers.
The glaciers that I have seen change and retreat during my lifetime.
It was an exhilarating but at the same time an unsettling experience.
I now think about glaciers as temporary, which actually is quite a shocking concept!
Going Gone
NINETEEN NINETY - NINETEEN NINETY TWO | walking the alps
Thirty years ago, a lifetime!
Those mountains haven’t changed
HAVE THEY NOT?
But for tourism on steroids
More pervasive, more aggressive, more people, more in your face
But for wet snow
Used to be dry and light - now wet and heavy
MORE STICKY - melts faster
My relationship with the landscape of the Alps goes back a long time and is complex, like any relationship that has endured.
I am not showing a simple yes or no approach. I photograph the good, the bad, the indifferent and all the up and downs of a long lasting relationship.
But the underlying message is I cannot live without being there, experiencing the landscape, looking at it, thinking about it and visualizing it.
Much has changed - nothing has changed - more will change
The pictures I took - the pictures I am taking - the pictures I am going to take
The world changed - I have changed - our climate will change
MORE!
walking the alps
THE QUALITY OF SNOW | the end of history
UP & down | WALKING the camera
Light, shapes, colours, textures
Perspective, point of view, framing, moment
EXPERIENCES
Meaning?
Love of looking
Love for seeing
Walking the Alps
EXPERIENCING
Unwelcoming countryside
Sublime scenery
Inhospitable landscapes
Tired feet, tired legs, tired everything
EXHAUSTING
Significance?
Love for looking
Love of seeing
Walking higher
Moving unhindered through open space
A mindset rather than actuality
IMAGINATION or FANTASY?
Love to look
Love to see
Momentous!
up & DOWN | walking the CAMERA