The Marks of Man

The problem with landscape photography, in my case anyway, is the notion, that pretty much anybody who buys a camera and is a bit tired of photographing their relatives, their friends, Glamor?? or any other subjects, which when we face up to it are the real reasons why we have cameras. Down the list comes landscape, Sontag said it was a way of proving you were there. I'm quite insecure about the process of making a landscape. You would have thought, that with the number of people who make landscapes, for example at www.photo.net that somehow there is a living to be made from these beautiful interpretations of the landscape from around the world. What is it that makes us want to climb hills and photograph the sunset. I have my personal answer to that, I'm not sure if it's about photography. It's about my freedom, in a world where even though we live in a democratic country, freedom is a myth. So I try to find my freedoms within my photography. Other people find their fre...

New Zealand and photography are strange bed fellows. The history of this remote country is about survival and making do. New Zealand went through a period of unusual home made left wing politics, that made it hard to import any item not made in part, in country. That led to the Kiwi make do attitude, which of course is the same in many countries around the world. The man in the shed making do, is reflected in Britain and other places. Unfortunately the idea has gone a bit far here in New Zealand. In my exhibition I had a perfectly reasonable and intelligent man who came in a few times to view a picture. He then went to the same location to recreated the photograph. Yep lots do that, but to do it repeatedly and still wonder why the result is not the same as mine, surly would lead a person to ponder, that it takes more then a location and camera to make a good photograph. What I think is missing is the realization that education and immersion into the context, both culturally and histori...

If there is one thing that digital technology has affected it is the family photograph, arguably the most important form of photography, digital technology has enabled the average person more freedom in making the pictures and this is a good thing. This current era of photography has been the most important form of photography since its invention, it records our human frailty and mortality, our loves and our losses beyond the few years that we live. Eventually to fade itself once all who remember us have died or the memory has gone.