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Archive: Workshop your Artist Statement!
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Hi Everyone, nothing focusses the mind like knowing other people will be reading your statement rather than skipping over it in passing on a website (which I know no-one really visits 🙂 This is my first serious attempt so any thoughts gratefully received…
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My photographic art is strongly influenced by a fascination with human nature, decades working in the field of psychology and close observation of my own emotions. Often my work examines just one aspect of human nature or emotion at a time. In my most recent series, The Missing Series, each image begins as a self-portrait. While there is a clearly recognisable human element to the final photograph I use digital manipulation to remove some significant pieces the viewer might expect to see. The removal of the ‘self’ is then replaced by a component that represents what it is to be human. This serves to strip away some of the features we instinctively focus on in our everyday interactions.
The combination of photography and digital manipulation offers a way to create a new image that is not captured via one shutter press. I do not hide from the fact that my work is manipulated – it is clearly the case and it is a strong and important feature of the work. It allows me to break the rules and create impossible images that still appear somehow plausible. Elements that we inherently understand as necessary in our everyday visual reality, such as perspective and direction of light, are maintained to create a believable photograph.
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Love it – it got me to check out your website to see your images, so I’d say it works
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Well that is great news, thanks Mark
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Hi Kirsteen.
It’s a great statement. One tiny thing – wonder if there was a way you didn’t repeat the word ‘series’ so closely together – In my most recent work, The Missing Series, each image begins as a self portrait. Something like that, just a thought.
I’m interested to see what the others say about the ‘not hiding’ part. To me it sounds like you’re saying others do (which maybe they do!). I hope you don’t mind I did a little re-write below but of course it’s your work and your statement and that may not read well for you so hope you won’t be offended.
The combination of photography and digital manipulation offers a way to create a new image that is not captured via one shutter press. Manipulation is a strong and important feature of the work allowing me to break the rules and create impossible images that still appear somehow plausible. Elements that we inherently understand as necessary in our everyday visual reality, such as perspective and direction of light, are maintained to create a believable photograph.
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Thankyou Sandra, well spotted on the series…series point. I’d tweaked so much couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
The perspective you raise about hiding photoshop work is one that seems to rumble around the photography world, at least at conferences etc. I’ve attended and one I find an amusing discussion (as I consider myself more of an artist than a photographer I don’t usually care all that much whether an image is or isn’t manipulated unless it is to create unrealistic ideals of ‘normal’ women but that’s another discussion altogether). For my work though I thought it might be an important discssion point for some so wanted to express that I’m putting it out there and not pretending it is anything other than manipulated. Its a long running thing but perhaps would not be of interest to non-photographers.
All thoughts gratefully received, thanks so much for your input 🙂
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I’ve recently started thinking of myself more as an artist than a photographer and I have to say I have no issues myself if I wanted to manipulate something in post production to create what was in my vision. I guess when I was commenting before it was with my ‘photographer’ head on!
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I have a love for history. It started when I was very young. Throughout my life and travels, I have had opportunities to tour one historical site after another, whether it was a home dating back to times of the American Revolution, Civil War battlefields, colonial government buildings, a sunken WWII Japanese airplane, Japanese caves on the western Pacific islands of Guam and Saipan, or countless museums. I discovered that the more I looked at old photos, or visited locations of historic events throughout the world, the more I found myself being drawn into those images and locations, sometimes feeling almost as though I could have been there. That is what I want viewers to feel when they see my art — a chance to look into a world where they can feel transported to that time, that place, if only just for a moment.
This is why I am drawn to architecture as a subject matter. I like trying to convey some feeling of being there, being present in that moment. My main medium is watercolor and pen. I am beginning to explore history through the use of other mediums such as color pencil, oils, and soft pastels. My interest regarding subject matter, however, is not limited to architecture alone. I am also interested in botanicals and landscapes.
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Vicki, great and clear statement. I wonder about just flipping the paragraphs around and starting with introducing your interest in architecture and moving into explaining why? It would be good to hit the reader immediately with your interest and then allude to why. Just something to try!
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I agree with Lily about bringing up the Architecture interest, then backing it up. I love what you have written.
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