The Photo Cowboy: 2010

I have at least one camera with me at all times and sometimes four, with obvious exceptions which I am working to rectify. I do not have a waterproof camera but if I did I would keep it in the shower next to the shampoo. Outside of University projects, and major trips, I use photography as a recreational tool, a kind of catharsis. It can be used in any situation to pass the time. It is easy sometimes to go into a project with one style, one image set in my mind and I use this other photography to keep myself from getting stale. It is even easier to fall out with photography if you are bored of doing the same thing.

This is one of those individual moments. I began photographing from the train quite early on and wanted to develop the idea further. This was taken whilst I travelled down to my University interview in April of 2009. I was trying to see if you could photograph the people on the train opposite, and this is the only time I have ever managed to do so successfully.

There is an obvious parallel between a physical journey and the journey of life. For me, the significance was that this journey was the most important of my life ever. I was considering what everyone else was doing, what function the travel took, and what stage they were in their lives. But going in the "other direction" must be someone conscious of the autumn of their years. For me, this abstraction, makes me strangely, uncomfortably aware of my own mortality. I chose it because it is more significant to me than any other picture I have ever taken.

For my project this Easter we were given a brief which was entitled "Defining/Redefining". The aim was to study the work of one practitioner, photographic or otherwise. Based on this, we had to produce a large body of work based on their imagery and concepts. I chose Keith Arnatt, a photographer who I felt is in some ways similar to myself, though his work conceptually and visually much stronger than mine. In order to fully break down his work and calculate my personal approach or "redefining" I tried to saturate myself with knowledge of his work and approach. He moved from being a conceptual artist who simply used photography as a tool to being a photographer who documented his surroundings conceptually. I read several articles about him and by him concerning the attitude of the British art establishment towards photography. This gave me a good placing to start.

I had to find locations that combined the cliché beauty of the British landscape with fly tipping, debris and destruction. I also had to focus on my photographic approaches, primarily with my use of framing. Arnatt's genius is that he photographs these landscapes and scenes as if the careless littering was not there.

The length of time I worked on the brief for made it one of the strongest and most cohesive I've ever produced. I worked in locations in the north west around Manchester and numerous areas of Cornwall. In all these locations I tried to create a sense of place as well as having a strong foreground feature. Also, I found the pictures were stronger when I chose locations that had a larger context to them. I tried to research these areas as best I could. I photographed in areas where the homeless lived, around land cleared for developments never built, on polluted beaches in seaside towns and on unused harbours where the demolished buildings were falling into the sea.

I chose this image because I feel the tools of judgement I try to use as a photographer all came into play. I tried to be aware of light and exposure to create the right emotional tone. I also used angle and framing to create strong lines and balance in addition to having the flats visible, highlighting the location.

For one project we were set the task of producing a book of our photographs. This was not supposed to be a collection of our overall work though. It was set to be a stand alone project, which along with the linearity of its presentation created several challenges. This was a great project to work on in terms of how much stronger it was at the end compared to how it was at the beginning. My first idea was to base the project in my recent study of the photographers of the New Topographic era. Their work studied the new emerging vernacular within the appearances of U.S. industry in the 1960s during the economic boom of the time. This material is quite striking in terms of its scale, and I was totally seduced by this quality. I went to Plymouth, attracted by the sheer scale of the constructions there. While the pictures had the same quality of scale as the Topographics, they lacked any emotion beyond the pure awe of scale. My tutor questioned my motivation in choosing these locations. Also, as I lacked grander conviction I was not totally sure what I was focusing on – the pictures seemed confused, unfocused. I decided to take a sharp turn with how I constructed my approach.

I had been looking at the work of Paul Graham, but not with a view to emulating it. When I went back and looked at his work, “Troubled Land”, I was obviously impressed by the way he subtly weaved in elements of the socio-political conflict into the pictures. But what struck me more was the pure, dark emotion in many of the more suburban pictures.

Plymouth itself has a larger social and historic narrative – it is no longer the commercial or industrial port it once was, nor is it much of a holiday destination. Finding locations that expressed this were far more expressive than the gas mains and sheds that I was focusing on. The key change though was within these images linking together the headspace I that motivated me to choose these locations, with a treatment that expressed how I was feeling at the time. I tried to utilise the nature of the spaces – on the fringe between areas, on the fringe between spaces. I tried to build a strange sense of solitude, loneliness, by projecting my own inner feelings onto what I saw. This particular image I’ve chosen I think most contains these feelings.

For our final project of the year we were given a brief that was totally open. The only stipulation was that all the photography had to take place on or around the high street area in Falmouth. The title of the brief was "Audience in the Community". This was part of an annual event in which the first year BA students displayed their work in public spaces around Falmouth, and the adjoining villages. I was part of a group of nine who were all exhibiting our work in a seafront pub. We worked together to research what the area had looked like in the recent and distant past, as well as looking at what other groups had done previously.

I wasn't initially struck with an idea and so decided to spend the day frequenting the shops and exploring the hidden areas of town. Though this produced some good individual moments, I still did not feel I had a statement to make. I looked at other photographers who had documented small town existence around the UK, such as Tony Ray Jones, John Bulmer and Philip Jones Griffiths, but still could not develop a key idea. Being an affluent tourist filled seaside town, Falmouth lacked the essential visual intensity of the towns they had looked at.

One thing that eventually did occur to me was that a lot of these projects had been inspired by the news stories of the time, for example the miners strike. I find often that finding news subjects that affect or interest you can give the impetus and inspiration to create work that is both significant to others as well as yourself. My inspiration on this occasion was that there had a been a lot of negative news stories in the local paper about the student population. As well as this there was anti student graffiti sprayed on and around campus. I decided on the basis of this to do a study of just what it was that made us as students so repugnant to the locals.

In order to come up with a technical approach I looked at Tom Wood's "Looking for Love" and Jonny Stiletto's "Shots From the Hip". I was very inspired by Wood's work, though quite different in many ways from that of Martin Parr is a close cousin in terms of its framing and use of flash. Jonny Stiletto's however concentrates on the great one things one can achieve with a camera when ignoring everything our normal sense teaches us. It teaches you not to look through the viewfinder, focus the lens, use an appropriate shutter speed, let alone load the appropriate film for the low light conditions or even hold the camera particularly still.

I do not enter any of my project by halves, and working on this one I was into several pints. I was trying to harness Stiletto's wildness and immediacy of approach to create a sense of the haze one feels when drinking on a night out. This was only enhanced by drinking while I worked. As I drank more I became more attracted to photographing the movement and neon colours of the lights, as I would have been had I not had a camera. I chose this image because in subject and execution it most summarises the madness of the binge drinking nightclub experience.

For my final major project on my foundation last year I did a documentary series on amateur boxers. Though the sport has been a passion of mine for some years, this was not the sole motivation for doing it. I have many strong views about the positive role of boxing which is rarely mentioned. It is frequently labelled as a dying sport, receives no coverage in the media, and is thought of as a brutal, chaotic sport filled with arrogant brutes.

Though it has been covered a great deal in literature, film, and other visual arts I felt that as a scholar of the sport I might find my own personal expression in studying it. I realised that finding the right location, and people to cooperate with a young photographer would be difficult. Not only did I not know anyone who boxed but I was technically very raw and had never worked with people or done portraiture at any great length. However this challenge was what drew me to it.

The question of researching it was simple to plan - I simply had to find every kind of information I could. I read fighters biographies, collections of newspaper articles, online forums and news sites. I watched several documentaries, as well as numerous films and tried to find as many instances as possible in which boxing had been given treatment in visual arts, including photography, and pure photojournalism i.e. publicity shots. Firstly I tried to identify what not to do. Again, boxing and other sports having been portrayed so much had me in a corner (forgive the pun) where I had to identify what had simply been done before. What clichés that existed within its visual portrayal. What clichés exist within people's minds about the sport that had to be broken.

So in turn, I had to work out what it was that I wanted to express. What the core of the project would be. I tried to break down everything about the sport that makes it interesting. Why people watch it. Why boxers take part in it. How people perceive boxers, how they perceive themselves, and why. What the experience is of fighting and training.

Side point - after several weeks of initial research came to a close I was severely worried that I had still not found any gyms interested in the project. and was in the IT suite at college finalising my project proposal. I could see someone over my shoulder watching boxing on YouTube - it turned out that there was a young man in illustration who boxed frequently as an amateur. When I asked him about the possibility of taking his photo training, he was not cooperative but insistent. What I had forgotten is that boxers are also incredibly vain and love having their pictures taken hence why they are in such prime shape in the first place. It is as if I forgot Muhammad Ali existed.

I proposed the best approach was to photograph these young boxers training. Again, I was very technically raw at the time. I used several different cameras and lenses, but only had a charity shop flash gun with one setting and no pivot. I started off using as many approaches as possible, focusing on the graphic qualities of the equipment, the boxers at rest and in action, posed portraits and unposed.

I had a real learning experience when I saw the pictures back from the first shoot - they were terrible. I realised the chasm between what I wanted to express and my skills and knowledge of the camera. Also, the speed, and pressure of the event affected my ability to find the images. But I was undeterred. I created an enormous list of pictures I wanted to take, and analysed at length the shortcomings of the pictures I had taken beyond the technical.

The picture I have chosen is the fruition of this. The youngest boxers were all incredibly sharp punchers, skilled and confident. But when I got them to stand in front of the camera their confidence dissipated. It was only later when I saw the photography of Rineke Dijkstra when I greater understood how the camera can be a microscope, a spotlight. That it can reveal a lot about your self image, your self confidence when you don't feel in your element.