Artist's Statement
At the heart of my work is a desire to celebrate the beauty of the physical world. My work is a meditation on the balance between the known and the unknowable. Photography, for me, is a tool that can document reality and also explore the mysteries within it. I am fascinated by how the photographic process, which relies on the laws of physics, can capture both the seen and the unseen, the physical and something spiritual that lies beyond that. Through this current body of work I celebrate the purity and simplicity of natural forms, while also inviting the viewer to reflect on the profound beauty that lies beyond the surface—beauty that is both grounded in the physical world and transcendent of it.
Explanatory Text: The Sea Sublime
I believe that if I can't express something simply it means I don't understand it. And conversely, working to simplify an explanation is a great help to refining my understanding of something. So what follows is a distillation in simple language of the project that I am now embarking upon.
What’s this project about?
This project is a celebration of the beauty of the natural world. It’s a beauty I believe is very mysterious yet very real. I feel acutely the power of this beauty and I find it draws me in and compels me to strive to express it. I love how this real yet inexplicable thing exists in harmony with the laws of physics that govern the universe. I love how the universe is vast and we cannot comprehend its scale and workings, but that trying to understand the universe and our place within it the great obsession of humanity. Looking at the universe highlights just how tiny we are within it – but doing so does not diminish us - quite the opposite. This endless struggle of comprehension is the great human trait.
Why pick the sea?
The sea is a perfect subject because it is vast, unending and ancient. The sea predates life on earth and is also the cradle of life. The sun was rising and setting over the sea many millions of years before the first single celled organisms existed and it's still doing the same thing today. I imagine it was beautiful then and I think it will be beautiful tomorrow and long into the future. No two days are the same, and yet they are limitless and innumerable, each day beautiful in a slightly different way.
Why use photography?
I am using photography because photography is a straight manifestation of the laws of physics that govern much of the universe. Photography works with classical field theory (in optics) and quantum electrodynamics (in image capture in both film and digital). I have always loved these laws and spent my early years studying them. The same laws that make the universe work make photography work. I think there is a nice symmetry and sympathy in the photographic process and in the subjects I’m seeking to record.
What’s my process?
I regard my process as photography in its simplest form. There are no tricks. All I'm doing is holding a camera in my hand as I stand on the beach and making a photograph of what’s there. This process uses a lens to focus an image of the world onto light-sensitive material and record it. I take this recorded information and make it into a photo. That’s it. I simply stand on the beach and I see something that I hope I can share through my process.
What am I hoping for?
I am hoping I can create images that will allow a viewer to see something of the same beauty that I see. I hope that my process will allow people to see something in a way they have not seen it before - to see a beauty that they have not noticed before and be moved by that. I want this work to be a celebration of the timelessness and mystery of the natural world and I hope that people can feel that they're a part of that world and a part of that beauty when they see this work. I don’t want to lecture or admonish anyone, just celebrate being alive and to help them.
But hasn’t this been done before?
Well yes it has. There are many manifestations of this idea. Perhaps the most recent is the 18th century notions of the sublime that were written about by Edmund Burke and Emmanuel Kant. You only need to look at a J.M.W. Turner painting to know that he was very interested in the sublime as well. I don't think there's much point in me trying to paint like Turner, or like Rothko for that matter. That's been done and explored so I'll leave it alone for now, but part of being an artist involves a dialogue with those who’ve worked before us. One thing I believe I can do is look at photography in a way that is uniquely my own. I’ve always a way of questioning things and reducing them to first principles. What is photography, anyway? Why not make photographs when it’s too dark to see? Why not make hand help exposures of waves at 30 seconds? What happens if we omit detail rather than including detail? Photographs record a certain moment in time, but the length of that time is quite arbitrary. Photographs are not definitive representations of anything. If do my work properly perhaps I can help our eyes see a bit further and find a bit more of the world’s limitless beauty that we may otherwise have missed.
