29th April- 4th May Thoughts and Theory

The Whole Picture // The Whole Frame


The idea that a singular photograph can encapsulate subjective reality.
Generally speaking within documentary disciplines, a photographer; specifically a photojournalist is aiming to capture objective reality just as it is in front of them, to document parts of the world, generally this type of photographer is focused on telling the truth as best they can, the more details and information presented with the images the more of a picture or narrative of the actual reality you are able to put together, the photojournalist would be primarily creating work for news and publication organisations. But documentary can literally be implemented into any moment in life, you can document cultural events, people at work, your friends and family or yourself, the landscape, objects, absolutely anything and be able to create a representation of those places or people of thing across time. So I guess the documentary photographer has a lot of freedom within their perspective and access to the world so where is the point where the lines blur between straight objective photography and into subjective interpretation and expression of oneself rather then the outside world?
My understanding is that all photography can be viewed through any lens or from any perspective, I guess there is certain niches such as photojournalism and forensic photography that are considered truthful especially because they are used for piecing together objective reality and usually the photographer is highly qualified and has a good reputation from being real. But even still people are capable of wrong even in a serious context. As we know there have been major lies created and run by the BBC and other ‘official’ broadcasting services throughout the past 60 years, The Golf of Tonkin for example or WMD’s in Afghanistan, big stories that were fuelled by big media and behind that a whole casmn of happenings, movement of power and money across the globe, projects that will go unheard of for 100 years. There is most certainly a narrative that presented to the world and the past few years, and we can see behind the veil more than ever these days. The truth a lot of the time is what a lot of companies and media services are manufacturing, to create narrative and to construct a reality to get people invested and to ultimately hijack their sense of order in the world and to eventually hijack their identity, their power and ability to think for themselves, because people that think and question things get in the way and disrupt the stream of their ways of keeping oder at bay.
I find it hard critiquing the system and cultures legitimacy, and I feel I do not do any favours to myself but I know that I am capable of going against the grain, against the law to enjoy life and a lot of people do and they work and live in every avenue in life, it’s just how the human condition is, and god we are in a good position globally at the moment, we for sure have come out of hell as a civilisation and into a magical time period of abundance in which myself can walk freely anywhere and meet very little conflict.
So when is the photographer an artist? and what does it mean to focus on the inner eye?
The inner world for me is visual, I piece narrative together through imagination and through thinking to myself. In here is where you can create anything, you can explore endless energy and thought, you can link other reality into your own perspective and understandings of things. And through abstraction we can represent the things we see, what we mean and what we want to say or feel. Music is a good point of focus as through using words to express emotion and meaning the artist creates a subjective thread of consciousness in which the viewer can latch into and explore through their own perspective. And some of the best writers and performers such as Bob Dylan are so vague in their words, they speak in abstraction, that I guess the songs are open to many many interpretations. When listening or viewing good art then the viewer will have sparks of thought and ideas, there is so many different types of art and all types of people are attracted to things uniquely. And that is the beauty of it, art is like a catalyst into the mind, a doorway into endless possibility.


Everything you do can be a work of art. To be attentive in the everyday things, everything can be a work of art. Nature itself,






is mostly tying to say as much as possible through each frame, trying to abstract the meaning of reality as it is found into a single moment, specifically to show the truth, . I feel this idea is true for me, the more meaning, the more information that links to the outside world from within the frame that there is, then the situation can be articulated into a clearer picture in our minds eye of how the world is found here on out.
To protect the historical elements of the world, the core human values, that are increasingly becoming a blur as a result of the human conditioning and progress into artificial reality. It seems tempting to want more electronics, better and faster devices and more technology to aid civilisation through laborious work and through cognitive and mathematical problems. There is no doubt in my mind that these fields are here to stay and to be expanded upon, the threat of destroying the planet, ecosystems and the human spirit do not halt this progression and desire to transcend our current capabilities into things beyond our comprehension. But it does worry me as I feel what is really happening is not people being able to have more free time and more time to think introspectively about the world but to use and abuse people more, by not only just having their devices always connected to the grid, but also their minds, their complete attention. People are already working for free for these social media companies, by programming it with every search and every click, we are helping write the algorithms for AI day by day. Consequently by giving away our information through using these channels and devices, we are being understood by the companies and eventually AI how we think, what we are tempted by, what we desire, who we want to speak to, where to go. It will all be controlled somehow and these huge companies are also connected to the world wide grid of everything else communicating to each other. We are trapping ourselves through giving away our time and power to things that are made to take away our attention from the objective world but because of that we are taking time and attention away from deep thought and time with simply our own minds, with no interruptions just breath and the flow of consciousness, in which we find reality as it always has been, where we live and see and feel one another and our own values and meaning.
If we do not give the time to ourselves and articulate our thoughts and meaning in life, then things we do not understand will always get at us, we can not grow cognitively and can not progress spiritually as this is a process, it is a pattern of opening ideas and going into places that are to be explored by only yourself.
One of the real wonders of life to me is that I am here to experience life in a way that no one else possibly can, I will see things that no one has ever seen before and will never see again, it’s all here for me to interact with, absolute magic, the individual perspective, yet you are experiencing the same thing too. But I can only speak for myself.


So Photography to me is about acquiring a deeper insight into life, so that when I have my camera to hand I can recognise moments that are meaningful so that I can say something about how I see the world and how I interact with it. There is a profound sense that only a few people have that I have ever met and it is the ability to be so sensitive to being in any given moment, and within those moments to be able to extrapolate photographs that say just what was thought, understood or felt, or to simply observe from within a completely non partisan perspective, to simply see more and to be more. I feel I need to do this because life is hard and things will sure get the better of me unless I understand the values that transcend the confining parts of us.




Photography: The Antidote To Chaos.


All art aspires to the condition of music. - Walter Pater.
A portrait photograph is reassurance to the photographer that they are trusted by the person in frame.
Photographing people is one of the hardest tasks to get a full image of someone. A proper portrait should capture someones shadow, or have an expression of the inner and outer world in some form. This could be through the use of shadow or through layers or composition of the subject in relation to the surroundings and the shapes and forms in the abstract frame on the negative.
To me Photography is an abstract art, I’m taking small light sensitive images on a thin piece of film and then printing onto a flat surface (paper)… So from reality to photograph, there is quite a difference. ultimately it is experience turned into object. Yet the photograph is still as close as we will get to replicating objective reality, and we have pretty much documented ever corner of the surface of our planet this way. In many objective ways there is not much left to explore or to discover at the macro scale. A lot of the hard work has been done already. So it is only necessary to focus inwards, into the inner world of thinking; the micro, where it all takes place, where the battlefield is fought through words and where we see through conversation, through progression of idea; likewise to a song fluctuating through build-ups and falls, we can come about moments and realisations of our understanding of theories and ideas but also become conscious of the felt presence of the moment and bring forward clearer images of reality. And if the intake is clear (meaning; being fed well, listening and reading good work) then the ideas seem to be more achievable and simpler, not as much overthinking, which I do struggle with. So I guess a good focus for me is how the body, the image of the human figure can tell a lot to me.




I am not interested in shooting new things. I am interested to see things new. - Ernst Haas.


The truth requires no belief. It is the truth.