Sunday 30 December 2007

first post - here is the love:


with each post i want to introduce a new love landscape image and tell you a bit about it, or at least what i think about it. i'll start with some of the pictures people seem to like the best, and i'll add new ones as i produce them. at the moment i have around 2,000 individual photos to pair up, from all over the place over the last year. i hope this blog will make me get on with them!

this first image is called untitled 33 - it was taken in an alley next to the odeon in bournemouth, and with any print should come a scratch and sniff panel of urine, sick and bins. the red heart is one of the most pouplar i've done, and people like the pairing (this one's over my fireplace downstairs), though they often miss the darkness of the full graffiti piece.

i don't do the graffiti, by the way, i just record it. usually the landscape on the right is more landscapey, but it is there to describe the location/situation, so might be an interior or an urban scene, or anything that puts the heart in context.

i've only spoken to a few graffiti artists about what i do, and i know some will be put out at having their art recorded and made into a piece of interior art. one guy asked me what gave me the right to photograph someone else's art and 'frame' it as my own. well, firstly, their art is often vandalism of a public space, so ownership is questionable, though i'd respect the right of any artist to ask me to withdraw a piece. secondly, as a photographer, anything i photograph becomes my image as a result of the way i compose the picture and by the very fact that i chose to compose the picture. if this were hung on my wall and another photographer were to photograph my wall and publish it, apart from the issue of it being a private space that they've photographed, i believe that the artwork is the their own... if anyone ever reads this, comments are welcome!