Nutation - 2008

‘Sea is mystery, a vast area of unexplored, uncharted territory, a place seemingly unaltered through time where the true nature of our planet is exposed’.

Whilst the landscape that surrounds us goes through a seemingly never-ending metamorphosis, the minimal vision of the sea sky horizon remains relatively unaltered. A view that could be shared with our primordial ancestors. This perhaps goes some way to explain our obsession with this calming vista. Its simple meditative beauty inspires reflection upon the concepts of time and space. 

Alongside these themes, the ‘Nutation’ series also examines the act of image making itself and the somewhat paradoxical relationship between real and pictorial space. The viewer is confronted by an image that at first glance seems profoundly dimensional whilst being simultaneously drawn to the flat photographic surface. The metallic sea retreats into 'the void’ as the textured pattern of the waves appear to be little more than brushstrokes upon the picture plane .

As Above So Below 2009 - Present

‘That which is above is the same as that which is below.....Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos. the universe is the same as human, human is the same as the cell, the cell is the same as... and so on, ad infinitum'.

The influence the Moon have on our oceans is well known. In ‘As Above So Below’ this relationship is explored. What is familiar becomes less recognisable. Frozen in a fraction of a second, unseen by the human eye, these explosive swirling abstract forms seem to echo the cosmos, rejecting their earthly origin. An image more reminiscent of scientific studies of a distant galaxies than a breaking wave or turbulent churning waterfall. Each taking its name from a known moon from our solar system, before gravity brings us back down to earth to a more familiar perception of space and time, that of the photograph.

Heaven Up Here 2020

In Heaven Up Here the photographic lens shifts towards the heavens, not to document the cosmos, but to distill the feeling of looking upward. Celestial bodies hang in a seemingly endless void. Images that capture more than just astronomical phenomena. They reflect a deeper human instinct: to search, to wonder, to belong to something immeasurably larger than ourselves. With compositions that are stark and minimal just a single light suspended in a field of deep sky, or the soft transition of twilight hues giving way to night. There is no foreground, no frame of reference only presence, space, and stillness. The visual emptiness is deliberate, whether it’s the quiet gleam of Venus or the high brilliance of the Moon above dark water, each image asks us to pause and float skyward. Above all our noise, there is quiet. Above all our striving, there is grace. Heaven up here.

A Memory Of Place 2016

‘A Memory of Place’ is a personal exploration into memory and connection to place. There is nowhere on earth that can inspire such strong emotional response than the places of our childhood. The locations where we first experienced the majesty and mystery of the world. In 2016 for one last time I visited my families home, where my parents lived for almost 60 years. I had always found returning there as an adult to be a very calming and grounding experience, particularly wandering around the garden where I’d spent so much of my early childhood. For me this unassuming plot of land, wild in areas, had over time become a sacred spot with an almost spiritual personal significance. This may be a little over sentimental but for me, the places where we first encounter the world will always inspire the richest technicolour memories. Sun-kissed adventures in a finite universe where imagination ran riot. The wildness now had grown with neglect, tangled and overgrown but somehow still retaining its magic. In an effort to preserve some of the wonder and mystery I experienced as a child I wanted to shoot a series of still images. Chosing to shoot at dusk when as a child, the garden had an unforgiving, ominous, eerie presence. The tangled overgrown trees and bushes sublty lit with heightened and renewed significance. The images perhaps serving as a personal memorial, that could somehow enshrine these distant memories, that now lay in the shadows.

Sea is Mystery 2018 - 2020

‘Sea is Mystery’ further explores the tangibility of time and space within the photograph. Sculptural elements display apparent permanence against the motion of the sea. Of course both are in motion - rocks, groynes and wooden posts shift and erode over time. The sea hides and reveals it secrets, an unseen landscape, history juxtaposed against the seemingly unchanging image of the sea sky horizon. The sculptural forms seem to fluctuate, at times producing an image for depth, at times, against the flatness of the sea, they appear to drift towards the image surface, forming little more than abstract shapes on the picture plane.

Negative Surface 2005

In ‘Negative Surface’ the land, although central to the image appears as a dark detailless void. A challenge to the traditional aesthetics of landscape photography, this seemingly impenetrable yet infinitely deep shape displays an apparent permanence against the motion of water and sky. The viewer is left disoriented, with no reference for distance or depth, perhaps encouraged to contemplate the notion of 'the sublime’ or what has the power to compel and overwhelm us.

In Dark Trees 2005

‘In Dark Trees’ 2005 - Here the cameras focus shifts from wide expansive landscape to the more intimate space of the forest. The blurred detail produces a sensation of being immersed deep in the forest, whilst the sunlight through the silhouetted trees appears flicker and to float to the surface, abstracted in pure colour and form, as if on the picture plane itself. This absence of a clear subject leaves the viewer disorientated, their attention is drawn to the act of observing itself and the nature of visual representation highlighting the paradoxical relationship between real and photographic space.

'What is meant by the immensity of the forest. … We do not have to be long in the woods to experience the always rather anxious impression of going deeper and deeper into this limitless world.’ Gaston Bachelard ‘The Poetics of Space’

Precession 2000 - 2007

‘The horizon divides opacity from transparency. It is just one small step from earth matter to space light’ - Paul Virilio 

The ‘Precession’ series require the viewer to stand before them, close enough to experience all their nuances of colour and form. These simple sea and sky horizons are formed by capturing the subtle shifts of hue as daylight fades after sunset or emerges prior to sunrise, or sometimes harnessing the more rapid changing drama of an approaching storm. With exposures of up to an hour these images aim to examine the distinct boundaries between real and pictorial space, solid matter and light, ‘the full’ and 'the void’. 

‘My aim is to explore the tangibility of light, space and even time within the photograph’

Precession, the actual shift of sky against horizon, caused by a tilt in the earth's axis, exposes inaccuracies in how we mark time and space. A disruption that is, perhaps, echoed in the production of the photograph.

‘By its very nature photography involves abstraction, or the reduction of human vision to a two-dimensional representation’.

In the ‘Precession’ series the strong geometry that exists in nature is pared back to its simplest form. The horizon no longer provides reference for perspective, but becomes divider of the picture plane. This flattening of pictorial space, places us in what Gaston Bachelard termed 'intimate immensity’ where the space of the personal and the universal blend. The observer is confronted by an image of profound dimension whilst being drawn to the photographic surface. The image is prevented from adrift into pure abstraction by the traces of clouds, waves and land emerge almost as mere brush strokes the surface.

This image of limitless horizon and unbroken parallel is inspired by a rich inheritance of reductive aesthetics from Friedrich and Turner to Rothko and Ritcher. Indeed Friedrich and Turner conveyed in a vision of sea and sky a ‘pictorial world without matter’ that would set us free from the pull of terrestrial gravity and immerse us in pure colour and light.

The images are carefully selected by a number of aesthetic criteria. Often where detail is profoundly reduced, flatness enhanced. The quality of light and climatic conditions provide a full range of tonality and presence. Some appear airy and light while others, metallic, weigh a tonne. The absence of a clear subject leaves the viewer feeling disorientated, highlighting the act of observing and the nature of visual representation. The attention of the viewer is shifted from object to their own perceptual process in relation to object, again disrupting the distance between the observer and the site of optical experience. This flatness and scale, together with their treatment of light, seems to align them more firmly with hard edged modernist painting than photography. Perhaps questioning where does the precision of photography end and the creativity of painting begin?