Reflection on my own practice

1965, aged 8

I was a child photographer brought up in a family of serious amateurs. I followed an Arts route through my education and this became the main focus of my teaching career for many years. Photography has always ‘been there’ in my professional and personal life, but didn’t really impact on what I did until just a few years ago. Being poor at drawing and painting, my artistic tendencies were always thwarted by my lack of technical competence, but I never had any doubt that I could ‘see’ creatively and thus compose; photography became the ideal medium for me to work in.

My photographs betray my fascination with people rather than things. For me, the human race is at once endlessly intriguing to observe, yet often hateful, cruel and uncaring. The love-hate relationship I have with other humans means that I tend to avoid the soft, squashy sentimentalism of the ‘family snap’ seeking out instead more diverse and unusual perspectives on people.

The reflection-in-action I do when taking photographs takes two distinct forms: technical and aesthetic. After every shot there is always the instant, in-camera evaluation which weeds out the unsuccessful images and informs the next attempt, followed by a more thorough examination of the images back at the computer. I can be very critical of my technical inadequacies and I ought to be able to take what I learn from looking at my shots and making them better next time (but I don’t do that as well as I should, preferring instead to lunge in to the next shoot with enthusiasm and lack of care).

I am better, however, at reflecting on the aesthetics of my work. I do this as I am taking images, and retrospectively back at base. I am used to presenting my work to peers and talking about it, and have become quite adept at judging what a ‘good’ photograph is in the specific context of, say, a photographic society or a reportage workshop.

The context for my work varies according to the focus of the shoot (which might be street life, coastal erosion, abstract form…), but it is usually a comment on contemporary life and always about what captures my eye. I may shoot to a brief but I would find it hard to take photographs of something with which I had no personal engagement.

My work in the reportage/street photography/candid genre takes centre-stage in the current debates about ownership and consent. There is a growing belief that anyone with a camera in a public place is either a terrorist or a paedophile, no doubt a sign of our paranoid times but a sad state of affairs nevertheless. I am troubled by the ethics of covert picture-taking: I do it all the time and wrestle with the rights and wrongs of this practice. I am thinking around some research into people’s attitudes to this and intend to develop my work along these lines over the next two years.

There are few problems in my work: I need more expensive camera and lenses, of course; I need a bigger printer, of course; but these are material considerations and, whilst impacting on the quality of my output, they do not in themselves hinder the process of responding to a scene and interpreting it through my imagery.

I want to become a really good reportage photographer. To do this, I need to ‘get out more’ - away from the cosy city life here in Norwich and tackle some interesting and challenging subjects. I would like to take on a project which develops a theme over an extended period, for example a community in development or dissolution. The notion of a road journey is one I wish to explore – documenting all there is to offer from point A to point B.

I am rewarded enormously by my work, having found at last the creative medium in which I am most comfortable and successful.

Click here to see a map of my Photographic Territory: