My photography
There have always been cameras in my life. My grandfather, uncle and father were all snappers. They photographed their families and friends, the aftermath of WW2, their changing way of life. When I was growing up I spent many a rainy day rifling through the family albums and multiple boxes of black and white prints. The images seemed to be teeming with narratives, imbued as they were with our history and the untold stories of the people in them.
When I bought my first camera, I walked the streets shooting what I saw. Sometimes, it felt a little awkward, like an intrusion, but it seemed important to me and I loved it. I knew nothing of Atget or Cartier Bresson; the Farm Security Administration or the Museum of Modern Art, or any of the other protagonists, movements and institutions that stand at the heart of photographic practice as it is today. All of that came later and it is a wonderful world to dive into. Studying the work of others, remains the single most important way of informing your own work. Advice that I would offer to anyone who intends to pick up a camera in earnest.
I hope that the pictures and articles on this website will be of interest to those of you who come across it. It is an attempt to show my images and writing to a wider audience, and a special thanks to those who have shown an interest in what I am doing.
Photography as a visual medium, like all of the arts, is a fruitful source for academic discourse and like many an undergraduate, my horizons were broadened by the writings of John Berger, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. But for the purposes of this short introduction , I have collected quotes from some notable practitioners whose words are a fascinating insight into the world of photographic seeing.
Please forgive the glaring omissions: Robert Frank, Saul Leiter, Vivian Maier, Jane Bown, Don McCullin, barely scratches the surface, but if you are serious about photography, and if these names are not yet known to you , then I respectfully suggest that you reference them and get stuck in. You won't be disappointed. S
"The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler."
-Walker Evans
"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."
- Gary Winogrand
"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told."
- Cindy Sherman
"If there is anything jarring at all in my photographs, it's because we are so used to ingesting pictures everywhere looking beautiful."
- Martin Parr
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things, but in photography it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.”
- David Bailey
Read my short stories and other writing on: Stephen J Vowles Substack: Feeding The Compulsion.
https://stephenjvowles.substack.com/?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=2v8ri8