Contemporary Photography and Me: It's Complicated

“Indeed, is not the homecoming amateur with his vast number of artistic snaps more contented than the hunter, returning laden with the game which is only of value to the trader.”

Walter Benjamin

Relationships change. Some fade quietly, others end in spectacular fashion involving raised voices and the division of houseplants. Thankfully, my relationship with photography falls somewhere in between.

Before anyone sharpens their pitchforks, this is not a break-up letter. I still love photography. I have spent years studying it, making it, obsessing over it and, on more than one occasion, arguing about it with university lecturers and tutors when I should probably have been paying attention to something else.

But lately, something has shifted.

Photography, as a singular artistic medium, no longer excites me in the way it once did. I still admire the medium enormously, but increasingly I find myself drawn towards painting, sculpture, installation and forms of art where the artist's hand remains visible. There is something about physical mark-making, the gesture, the resistance of materials, the evidence of labour that leaves a deeper impression on me than 'most' photographs.

That does not mean photography has not shaped me. Quite the opposite.

Henri Cartier-Bresson taught me about intention and composition long before I fully understood either. Fan Ho's photographs of Hong Kong continue to resonate deeply, perhaps because they overlap so strongly with my own memories of growing up there. Looking at his work often feels less like viewing photographs and more like opening an old family album that I never knew existed. Chris Killip showed me that photography could possess immense humanity and dignity without slipping into sentimentality. Seeing a Killip print in person is a powerful reminder that photographs can still stop you in your tracks. Alongside them stand figures such as Robert Capa, Richard Avedon and Steve McCurry, photographers whose work helped define my understanding of the medium.

Yet these photographers increasingly remind me not of where I am artistically, but of where I began. That realisation was initially unsettling. As artists, we often assume that our influences remain fixed points throughout our careers. In reality, they move with us, and sometimes we move beyond them.

These days I find myself looking elsewhere. I am increasingly fascinated by the cameraless processes of Garry Fabian-Miller, the immersive light environments of James Turrell, and the profound simplicity of artists such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Agnes Martin.

Standing in front of a Rothko is a curious experience. To some people it is a transcendent encounter. To others it is simply a large rectangle in an expensive frame. Both responses are perfectly valid. Personally, I find that if I spend enough time with one, something shifts. The painting stops being an object and becomes an experience. Perhaps this is where I now find myself as an artist: somewhere between photography and everything beyond it.

Having recently emerged from several years of academic study, I am now free from essays, deadlines and assessment criteria. Unfortunately, I have discovered that my own expectations are considerably harsher than those of any tutors.

The art world remains daunting and photography still often occupies an uneasy position within it, frequently viewed as the younger cousin desperately trying to sit at the grown-ups' table. Rather than discourage me, however, this only strengthens my resolve. I want to make work that unsettles, intrigues and rewards prolonged looking. Work that asks questions rather than provides answers, and if that journey takes me beyond photography, then perhaps photography has done exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place.