Kia ora tatou: I have always been a fan of Oscar Wilde. In spite of his peculiar system of morality, he always lived his life on the square and took a particularly idiosyncratic route. In spite of being at odds with the Victorian ethos, his genius shone through. it has been many years since I [...]
Lately my journeys and the photographs I make have begun to overlap. The pictures inform my journey, the journey informs my images. And as will happen when we begin to look in the rear-view mirror, a trend will emerge. Sometimes this will be a radiant butterfly or a long winding road, mapped perfectly. Occasionally however, [...]
Kia ora tatou: It seems appropriate to begin the New Year with this. A long time ago, while I was studying German at Canterbury University, we were required to study the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. I confess I really didn’t give him the attention he deserved. I was more interested in romance and being [...]
Not surprisingly many of the canonical images of early war photography turn out to have been staged, or to have had their subjects tampered with. - Susan Sontag Kia ora tatou: A few days ago, on my Facebook fan page, where I put up all the stuff which really doesn’t need a full post, I [...]
I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien I’m an Englishman in New York I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien I’m an Englishman in New York Sting Dubai is possibly the most surreal place I have ever visited. Being my first experience of it meant that I was looking at it with fresh eyes, and [...]
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Albert Einstein It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. Edward de Bono I have been thinking… I know a number of you [...]
Kia ora tatou: I have been thinking. Last weekend I was out with a couple of good friends, making photographs. We were bouncing our way along an icy track when an image, an arrangement of relationships, of time and space, caught my attention and asked me to make it (that is the way it happens, [...]
So many people dislike themselves so thoroughly that they never see any reproduction of themselves that suits. None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer. – Imogen Cunningham A portrait! What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound. – Charles Baudelaire [...]
Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the writer. But they might be… To apply HDR processing to a photograph is like putting on makeup. It’s very easy to go too far, to put on too much. ~the BlorkBlog There are three possible parts to a date, of which at [...]
I have a very good memory, but it’s short. Thank god for photography. – John E. Burkowski There is one other quality specific to the medium: its unique relationship with reality, a relationship which has little to do with ‘truth’, visual or otherwise, but everything to do with the emotional charge generated by the photograph’s [...]
Kia ora tatou: I have a belief that in helping one person I help many, however undetectable that may seem. For that reason I mentor a few people, not as a kind of photographic personal trainer, but as a kaiako,a guide. Knowledge and awareness should be shared. I received this from Jenny, whom I have [...]
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. – Tom Stoppard, “Artist Descending a Staircase” “I didn’t expect you to understand me,” he answered. “With your cold American intelligence you can only adopt the critical attitude. Emerson and all that [...]
Yesterday I had the fortune, if you could call it that, to visit the heart of the red zone in the central city. I was there with my friend and fellow artist and analogue photographer Paul Johns to recover his work from the badly damaged building he lives in on Manchester street, unfortunately this time [...]
Kia ora tatou: This short, terse and nasty e-mail arrived in my inbox late last week. Fortunately I was on the Road, and only having a BlackBerry gave me the perfect excuse for avoiding it. So I did. Now, however, having returned home, it simply will not go away. The person who sent it to [...]
Kia ora tatou: They say there are six degrees of separation. In New Zealand that number is smaller, and in Christchurch, smaller still. We all sensed we were going to discover we knew somebody who didn’t survive February 22′s earthquake. All of us within the Christchurch photographic community will probably have met Stephen at one [...]
