Before Temple

FORWARD (THE PERPLEXITY OF THE VISUAL)

NORTH KENSINGTON, LONDON 1992
In the context of my pursuit of photography it was all set in motion by this photograph  [images-4]  taken, as I unwaveringly believed then, for compositional reasons only ( or to be more precise, harmony expressed through composition). It took me five years of trying to fathom this photograph to see there was more than composition, or harmony, in it that held the attention and although I grasp it now much better, there is still an aspect of the image that I cannot pin down. Now at least I know where this resistant layer comes from, as this was the first image where I had drawn, unwittingly of course, on my subconscious visual reserve that was generated by the childhood visits to Ronquieres. It looks like this was the beacon that put me, and kept me, on the right track, or I had better say, on the right tracks of this search, as the development was anything but linear. 

BRIGHTON MARINA 1995
One of those tracks took me to a building site near Brighton. The idea was to go with a 5x4 camera in search of a good composition just for pleasure’s sake. I enjoyed being there under the sun, surrounded by the poetry of  [images-5]  a messy building site. Except for recording and recollection purposes, maybe I also needed photography to give me an excuse to hang about in such an unorthodox leisure site. Although satisfied with the results obtained, I felt I had reached the end of that particular track and soon realized that, for the time being, I had no wish to make any further exploration in that direction. I probably sensed I would not be able to achieve much more with that approach or that kind of subject matter. Analysing this work from today’s viewpoint, its main purpose was to allow me to establish my visual propensity for construction sites and, rather importantly within England’s photography scene, no narrative was needed as justification. 

LOT, BRUXELLES 1995
Another track that I explored some time later was again related to my early school days as the photographs of this project had been taken in the rural suburbs of Brussels where I had spent many holidays staying with my aunt and uncle. Strangely inspired, in only one roll I made half a dozen outstanding (in my terms, and for that moment - but with time this attribute has remained attached only to two [images-7] of them) photographs. The most suitable camera angle for my work emerged during this project. The lens is pointed towards the ground, five to six meters away from me and the sky takes up only one fifth or less, of the image. Not long after finishing this project, I saw for the first time Kiefer’s photographically-based work from the second half of the 1980’s (e.g. The March Sand V, 1974); this gave me mixed feelings as I recognised similarities between some of his work and mine. Eventually, despite or because of the famous precedent, I decided to keep only the camera angle and the relative uneventfulness of the subject, and take them into any future project. Making this kind of decision and the technical implementation of them were the easier parts. Finding subject and location was much more difficult, if not impossible. 

NEWHAVEN, EAST SUSSEX 1996
A number of various other projects took place before a chance presented itself, and the only sign to tell me this was such an opportunity was that both the subject and my technical approach conformed to my recently and subconsciously adopted tenets. I say ‘subconsciously’ as they were not formed as clear thoughts. They were just insights allowing me to react to the right image if and when it appears. Coincidences were thus definitely more to blame than me for the train of events that took place. Anyhow, in this project I used symbolism for the first and, so far, the only time. Although, to be absolutely true to myself, I must say that there was a story attached to the “Brighton Marina” project. Except that it was done afterwards, i.e. I read the meaning into the project on completion, and in the sense of an ‘equivalent’. In the “Newhaven” project the narrative predated the images, a procedure which I do not welcome as it usually gives stillborn creations, though it may very well be that my story was inspired by the landscape in the first place.

This project  [images-6]  dealt with a paradox of life: it seems that our lives are rarely so intense and intensive as when we get very close to its opposite - death. The wasteland in the pictures presents hardship. The sea is the process of death, attractive (in face of adversity) from distance but repulsive as soon as we touch the cold water (the threshold of death). The sky is (the aftermath of) death, and the source of the real attraction death may hold for us. This was indeed my first, albeit small, breakthrough into the subconscious of my mind. It decisively helped me start charting the undercurrents of the rest of my related works that discussed here. Until then, I thought about photographs purely in terms of composition or aesthetic attraction.

SEAFORD, EAST SUSSEX 1996
Having analysed my work from the newly acquired standpoints, almost immediately I found myself in the next project further elaborating on the above mentioned paradox; but this time in conjunction with the subject of the deromanticised or banal ruins. I barely changed the location for this project as I moved only half a kilometer to the east, and as consequence had these related projects back to back. The single such occurrence, as the temporal isolation of the related projects is largely the reason why it took me years to tie them all together. Here, I explored the captivating quality of ruins not burdened with historical or romantic connotations, but visually accentuated by a flat or dull  [images-8] background. The marriage of this subject and the one from the above project had a curious outcome detected only recently during the overall review of my work, when I noticed that these ‘unremarkable’ ruins dominated the image not only visually but metaphysically as well. Mystery, conveyed by the remnants of a wall, was superior to the idea of the paradox of life, or life itself, which was conveyed by the surrounding space. 

There was however a downside to the achievement of this work, as for a while I completely lost the urge to make any new projects in this vein. Still, I was not frustrated by this inactivity as I had other, less absorbing but more practical, things to do, on the one hand, and on the other the distance that has come between me and my work allowed me to view it detachedly and as a whole, rather than in segments which was the tendency I had while in the process of carrying out a particular project.