[Kirsteen Titchener]

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.

 

[Kirsteen Titchener]

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 🙂