Conceptual Photography
I've been drawn to the conceptual and the lateral for as long as I can remember, only enhanced by my time at art college studying photography for three blissful years. Magritte, Jeff Koons, Escher, Christo: artists who thought sideways, who built worlds rather than just photographed them, often with a wink built into the ambition. That's the tradition I want to work in.
These five images are, for me, the purest expression of what I do. I build something real in three dimensions, then bring every ounce of my photographic training to bear on capturing it. None of it is quick, and none of it is cheap.
A crew of nine built this island lawn as the tide went out in Cape Town, racing to finish before the water returned.
In Iceland, I spent weeks recceing from a desktop, then flew out and drove the length of the country scouting locations, before photographing my way back across it with a crew for a week. The stacked red chairs, caught in an exquisitely timed mini sandstorm, inspired by a stack of café chairs I once passed in London.
I'll happily call myself eccentric, or the work a little ridiculous. But every one of these pieces is me: the planning, the determination, the joy of building something absurd and then making it beautiful.
Even the simplest idea here, a diving board in the middle of a lawn, I’d been mulling over for years before I finally shot it.
Please see more in this highly enjoyable series here.