Family propaganda

Magnum photographer, Martin Parr wrote (Guardian, 24 August 2010), 'Most family photo albums are a form of propaganda, where the family looks perfect and everyone is smiling: we try to create fabrications about who we are.' In these works I explored an image from my childhood.

Beach I, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

Beach II, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (over-painted, washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

Beach III, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (over-painted, washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

Preparing for a painting

Photograph of Bethany re-composed and manipulated in Photoshop

 I took a series of photographs of Bethany and selected this thoughtful, reflective shot for the subject of a new portrait painting. The manipulation below is not part of the preparation for the painting but interesting what can be done with a standard filter.

Interesting and pleasing effect created using a Photoshop filter

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) III

Untitled (Cuba), 2008

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) II

Balcony I (Cuba), 2008

Balcony II (Cuba), 2008

Balcony III (Cuba), 2008

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) I

Guantanamo, 2008

This photograph is a detail pulled from a photograph taken on a long lens several miles from the Guantanamo US Naval Base.

Voyeurism and surveillance (Couples)

Montmatre Café, 2009

Cordoba, 2009

Lower East Side, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Spain) II

Perfectly Plastic, 2009 (Alcazar, Seville)

Voyeurism and surveillance (Spain) I

Meeting I, 2009 (Granada, Spain)

Untitled, 2009 (Alcazar, Seville)

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris) III

Untitled (Paris), 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris) II

Crossing (Montmartre) I, 2009

Crossing (Montmartre) II, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris)

Romance (Paris) I, 2009

Romance (Paris) II, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (New York City) II

Untitled (New York), 2005

Voyeurism and surveillance (New York City) I

Jocelyn Wildenstein (New York),  2008

 Untitled (New York), 2008

Untitled (New York), 2005

Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Perivale, London Underground, 2010

Voyeurism, surveillance and the camera was the theme of the 'Exposed' a show at the Tate Modern in 2010. It is a subject that interests me. Over the next following days I will post my own photographs that explore this theme. . They are moments in lives, fragments of stories. They are also invasive as all of the photographs have been taken without the subject's permission. Together they 'explore the uneasy relationship between making and viewing images that deliberately cross over lines of privacy and propiety.'

The myth of photographic reality

Cathy, 2010, oil on canvas, 60 x 60cm.

‘Cathy’ is a painting of a photograph. More accurately it is a painting of a cropped printout of a colour-adjusted scan of a faded colour photograph taken around 30 years ago. In this work I set out to explore the myth of photographic truth. Patrick Heron said[i], “The primary purpose of art is that it determines, or dictates, what we see.”

In the linked text I argue that in representing the conventions of the photographic image in a painting, the viewer can see photographic realism as a style, that whilst so dominant that it appears natural, is in fact as artifical and arbitary as any other representational convention.

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[i] BBC documentary ‘Henry Moore: Carving a Reputation’, 1998

London building site

Manipulated inkjet print, 15cm x 10cm

Manipulated inkjet print, 15cm x 10cm

Manipulated inkjet print

Gloucester Warehouse, 2011, Manipulated inkjet print, 12.2cm x9.6cm

This dilapidated 19^th century warehouse in Gloucester Docks awaits redevelopment. The exaggerated colours are produced by a long night exposure. The inkjet inks are manipulated after printing though a process of wet brushing and heating.

Woman In Red

2009, 30cm x 40cm, Giclee print on German Etching paper.

Taken from an apartment in Montmartre, Paris late on a spring evening. I like the dynamic blurring of the image that has created an abstract expressionist quality to the photograph.