The Photographs I Never Took
Some of my photographs begin with an idea.
Others begin with experimentation.
These began with neglect.
After returning to Australia from living in Taiwan for three years, I finally unpacked the boxes that had been sitting in storage. Most things had survived reasonably well, although years of humidity and condensation had taken their toll. There was mould on books, rust on metal, and evidence everywhere that time had quietly been getting on with its own work.
Among the boxes were old negatives.
At first glance they looked ruined.
Some had stuck together so tightly that I thought they would be impossible to separate. As I slowly eased two strips apart, I expected to find damaged photographs underneath.
Instead, I found something completely unexpected.
The original pictures had almost disappeared beneath extraordinary colours, delicate textures and abstract forms created entirely by nature. Humidity, chemistry and time had transformed ordinary negatives into something I could never have planned.
For a moment I wasn't looking at photographs anymore.
I was looking at nature as a painter.
Negatives still clumped together
Initially I experimented with masking out the old photos, the bits I didn't like, trying to show just the beauty of what had emerged, as the original photographs no longer mattered, nature had already made something more interesting.
Negatives before scanning - shot macro on iphone
That realisation reminded me of something that has followed me through much of my work.
For years I photographed old walls, weathered buildings and forgotten places. What fascinated me was never simply the architecture. It was what time had done to it.
Paint fades, plaster cracks, layers build upon layers until colours appear that no artist could deliberately invent.
The weather paints differently from us, but like an oil painting is built in layers. Patiently, without intention. Yet somehow with extraordinary beauty.
Looking back, I realised I had been photographing the effects of time for years. This time, however, time hadn't worked on a wall, it had worked on the photographs themselves.
Detail - Walls and Windows Venice #023
Once I stopped trying to restore the negatives, another thought occurred to me.
What would happen if I repeated the process?
I found more negatives, added water, pressed them together and simply waited.
Humidity, chemistry and time took over once again.
Each result was different.
Each one impossible to repeat.
Each one carried the fingerprints of nature rather than my own.
Negative before scanning - shot macro on iphone
People often ask whether these works are photographs.
The answer isn't entirely straightforward.
A camera was involved at the very beginning, many years ago.
A film scanner was involved much later.
But the images you see today were never photographed in the conventional sense.
They were grown.
Discovered.
Revealed.
The artistic act wasn't pressing the shutter.
It was recognising that something remarkable had already happened.
Naturalia 1 #016
I increasingly find myself thinking less as a photographer and more simply as an artist.
Sometimes the camera is simply one of the tools.
Sometimes it isn't.
Sometimes the most interesting thing I can do is step aside and allow another process to unfold. That has become a recurring thread throughout my work.
Whether I am photographing weathered walls, constructing conceptual still lifes or discovering forgotten negatives in storage, I seem to be drawn to the same quiet idea.
Sometimes making art isn't about creating something new. It's about recognising something that was already there.