Surreal Photographic Compositions.
The way I collect images and construct my photographic collages bears many similarities to my approach when painting. The action of becoming lost within the work as it is produced is key to my approach. wether I am digitally constructing images or painting them the actions are informed in the same way, by subconscious choice. My recent photographic collages have been made by exploring local landscapes, rural and urban. While there I have captured images of people and places. At first I notice something that makes theme stand out, I feel a strong desire to record there existence, but I am not consciously sure why. Once I have collected a number they are transferred to computer. Now I wait. I wait until I feel the time has comet to place these two together, producing an image full of new meaning.
The need to become lost within during this process is very important. It is crucial for me to create an atmosphere where my actions are informed by the subconscious, and choices are driven by feelings and not thought. Actions are taken fluidly and not rationally. These people are now placed where it feels right for them to be.
At times I feel the need to break with conventions such as scale, or that of expected behavior based on appearance. By this action I believe a new message is conveyed, and a subconscious need is fulfilled. When landscape and character come together I am often left with a slight sense of disquiet, a feeling that they don't belong, but perhaps some how they do. I am left with questions. Is altering the characters scale simply a way to suggest mans superiority over nature? Are the landscapes a metaphor for an inner world constructed by me as a child, stored within some part of my mind? The adults I bring to them today find it to be a small place. This is my experience as I visit locations I new as a child, places I have not seen for many years. They seem small to me now, but full of meaning.
"My lack of interior consistency has summoned up these open places, these people unconcerned with me, but whose proximity is welcome to me, to my condition which "answers" to it, the condition of man lacking the strength of solitude. To call this a visual illusion is still being on the wrong track, since it is only secondarily visual. The impact of an impression, excluding the others, and in two or three seconds the scene is visualised. Before seeing it, we are in it. First and foremost, we are there."
(Michaux, 1974)