mercredi 20 juillet 2005

Reworking the Past Keep writing... keep photographing... keep drawing I am reminded most days - sometimes quite simply by a random image flashing through my mind... but more often than not by a nagging realisation - that when I left art college in 1966 I had done the wrong thing. I only realised that I'd made the least worst choice of courses on the day I looked at other student's final Diploma presentations... the final day of my college life... the first day after the last day when I could have made a statement of rebellion against what I'd been doing those previous four years... but I didn't. I was already married to Roz, who had graduated the year before, we already had a daughter, and I didn't have a job. The promise of a position at a major independent TV station was good, but I had to wait for nine months as the A.C.T.T. TV technicians union only allowed two "production trainees" to be employed at any one time. I understand the other trainee went from nowhere to becoming Director General of the B.B.C... but I only remember John (now Lord) Birt for one thing in the early days of his career - an end of programme party somewhere in the country where his bathtub was full of chilled bottles of champagne... my-oh-my, how others live! I should say before I ramble on... the course I wished I had done for graduation, a career and life, was photography. I first enjoyed, then endured, seven years in television before realising that graduation day wish... and on my 30th birthday left Granada TV to try earning a living as a photographer. Thirty plus years later I'm still trying... my only real disillusionment being with the country where I was born and raised and helped raise my own family... which now as Blair's Britain (influenced by advisor Birt's "Blue Sky Thinking") is becoming more divided. It isn't a place I look forward to returning to after the harmony of life found, even as an etranger, here in France. Harmony is what I now need more than anything... there has to be a balance found between my physical exertions - there's a slowly worsening situation where my wife Trish needs more care and attention (my body isn't getting any younger either) - and the mental stimulus of being creative. I can't do one without the other... and as the physical side becomes more demanding so I'm having to create more with my brain and hand. I'm sure many people have this or a similar problem in life... and you would think that as it inevitably comes up on you quite slowly, you would be able to adjust and prepare for it. Maybe others, most others, can and have done... but I haven't. I've only seriously started to look, to explore, creative possibilities, today, by undoing a portfolio of college artwork which has given me more pleasure than I dared hope for. I'm not sure the artwork is any good... as I'm too out of touch from squinting through camera viewfinders for the past 40 years... but a spark has ignited... and I feel there's reason to look back at what I sketched and painted... and to try achieve that "harmony" with tools other than cameras and chemicals. I have the time, paper, pencils, paints, inks, colours, ideas, subjects... all I need to start is the confidence to combine some of them. I'll not be able to separate my photography from my art (unless the Devil Digital turns me off the former) so I look to gain from both disciplines. There are many out there offering advice and insights... one of the most inspiring I found to be Brooks Jensen, editor and publisher of LensWork magazine. I've just started to download and listen to his regular podcasts which are more anecdotal than photographic. As a photo journal editor his attitudes are the most refreshing I (as an ex-editor of a photo journal) have listened to. If only I'd have had those words to hang on to all those years ago when I was changing direction... but then again he hadn't uttered them. My first drawing on this new blog was made in 2001 some time after we arrived in France. The courtyard behind the "Comptoir des Croustilles" restaurant and gîte was very pleasant with enough plants, vines, blue window shutters, quiet women at shaded tables, sunlight and shadows playing together to inspire images in camera or on sketchpad... you just had to do it, rather than just look at it. The original subject can be seen lower-right in the colour photo... the drawing of the plant's outline was my interpretation of the negative spaces between the leaves which is how I remember drawing sometimes during college classes... Reworking the past... 2 I'm branching out and have started uploading artwork with the intention to talk about drawings and paintings I've made over the years between loading more rolls of film into various cameras. Hopefully, I'll improve some long-lost techniques from art college days by committing myself on paper (and monitor screen) and have fun in the process... which is more than I've been getting out of photography for the past year or so! 8:28:33 PM    comment []