I took part in this recent challenge to post and write about five photographs
from my archive over five days.
Boy and Net.
I was doing this series of photos on Irish beaches and I had just put my cameras back in the car when I turned and saw this scene . A little boy - jostling the waves with a fishing net . It was over at Achill island on Keem beach . I took out my old 5x4 and shot off just one sheet of film by hand holding the camera , guessing exposure and setting focus to infinity . It makes for a dramatic shot with mountains behind the beach, the dark sky and the rolling waves from the Atlantic.
Bread Making .
We take photographs but we can also learn from them . I love simple photographs and while working in studios in London I was exposed to the timeless elegant photographs of food by Irving Penn in American Vogue.
I was commissioned to photograph ‘Pizza Defined’ (Estragon Press) it was the first cookbook I’d worked on and I was doing step by step photos of the author Bernadette O’Shea making the pizza dough . I set up the lighting and took one shot .The light was perfect (it had a Bergman winter light feel) and for once there was no need to adjust it . Food photographs lead us to believe in the authentic , the natural, they make us hungry . Images tell us what to believe and what to desire . This is ‘what images want’ as the photography writer W.J.T Mitchell has written about. I am a sucker myself when I see a good food photograph in the supermarket even though I know the product inside won’t look as good , i still fall for it.
Food is one of the easiest subjects to make bad pictures of and many recent Irish cookbooks have very flat, bland and forgettable photographs.This might have something to do with the trend to shoot with no lighting or cheapness of digital photography .
Shooting with ‘natural light’ might work in California , Australia or the South of France but any photographer north of Bordeaux needs to know how to create this kind of light themselves .
This early photograph is also a reminder of the opportunity to acknowledge the people who supported me from the very start like John and Sally McKenna from the McKenna’s Guides . I worked with John on the food page of Cara magazine for around 10 years and also Kevin Gurry the first graphic designer that encouraged me and gave me my first jobs .
Curious Horse Andalusia .
I snapped this guy on my way up the winding mountain road near Ronda in Spain . I was on my honeymoon, which got off to a bad start when at the airport my wife saw that I was bringing 5 cameras and treating it as a photographic mission. The desire of the crazy photographer to find or make great pictures is not explored much , not as much as how men put work before relationships anyway ! One morning at around 3 or 4 am I took Anne Marie to where their was supposed to be this amazing fish market . I’d hoped to find some photographic potential there. It was nothing much so we returned to find that we were locked out of the small hotel we were staying in. She was crazy tired and annoyed and wanted to get back to bed but we ended up having to sleep in our hired car .
This was printed by Mike Crawford a Master printer from London with a Lith print toned in selenium.
Shot on black and white film with an Mamiya RZ Camera and 90mm lens .
Buskers Prague
I don’t think this is one of my best photographs, however this image is like good song: I keep coming back to hit replay for some reason.
I snapped these two buskers on Charles Bridge in Prague. He was motionless like a sentry, she sang a lyric soprano opera that would blow anyone away!
He was buttoned up, dignified looking and I imagined them returning to their Prague apartment to read Kafka. She was amazing! A talent of astonishing singing skill. Yet,she looked like many women I’ve seen doing their shopping at any suburban Tesco with her trainers, tracksuit pants and polyester hoodie . Why is this so interesting? Well, something about the couple, he was well dressed and seemed to dislike being on show, he reminded me of my father. She sounded like she was from another world. They made a strange couple. While I hold onto the memory of the experience, I realize that photography has it’s limits. A still image to convey music? What I felt and experienced didn’t match up to the reality of the photograph. Runners and opera? Another reason I love it is it reminds me of the kind of people I met growing up in our family shop ordinary, unfashionable, warm, talented and lovely people. So many talented people that never hit the big time and so many that eschew the limelight, I realize that this is a foreign idea to some young people, how would you not want to be famous? Photography can do all this and more, however I don’t believe in photography as a universal medium.Every photograph has many personal readings.This photograph can never have the same meaning for you because you didn’t hear that voice.
PostScript: I thought it might be interesting (ten years on) to see if they still perform in Prague so I scanned the internet of busker pictures of Prague but no sign of them.
Shot on Contax G2 35 mm rangefinder.
Kitchen Abstract.
The need to make a photograph is almost an obsession at times. A passion for images a shared characteristic of all the best photographers.If I have no personal or commercial project on I sometimes take my lighting outside to the garden at night or select an unusual subject matter to photograph-whatever scratches the creative itch. Lacan described it as ‘the appetite of the eye.’ I like that description. In this case I saw these cool wet patches on our kitchen worktop that would condense and disappear in no time. So what could be a more worthy subject that photography can transform into something interesting?
I photographed about 40 different ones. Doris Lessing writes that there is no way in not being intensely subjective. Angela Kelly challenges the belief in the individual artist creates from his or her own unique experience. Here in the condensation is a kind of self portrait. A photograph that is part of a personal series but not unique. Water spills in the shapes of Kangaroos on kitchen surfaces. However, we see what we want to see in pictures - as in life.
