My Arts Practice
Through the digital manipulation of photographic images I re-configure landscapes. By compiling scores of photographs to make a single image I challenge the viewer’s sense of reality and familiarity. At first glance my work appears to be the subject of photographic reportage but closer inspection reveals its true nature as semi-fictional socio-economic landscapes.

Creating such work is my way of documenting life. Those features that appear commonplace are used as metaphors for the places we occupy when navigating the everyday world; their themes relate to issues common to many environments in Britain.

Each piece of work threads together aspects of everyday life as reflected in the people, buildings, objects and decor found in my work.
In my choice of subject I do not seek to pass judgement, rather I wish to raise issues relating to how we spend our leisure time, where we live and how we change our environment. And by ‘we’ I mean to include a broad range of people, I do not wish to be pejorative.

Before ‘l’art pour l’art’ pictorial representation stood in the place of words, telling stories, often religious and often a means by which a ruling minority could exercise control over an impoverished majority. Though for art to become a vehicle through which the bourgeoisie could exercise their ‘self–understanding’, could hardly be called progress.

Processes and Techniques
My work is produced digitally. Using a professional digital camera and computers I compose large-scale images ready for output either as, inkjet, Iris or Lambda print. All the work is light-fast in gallery conditions.

The methodology I employ usually involves photographing an event; such as an air show, football match or fair; or a specific time and place, such as early morning shopping or late night revelling. Employing the collected images, I use Adobe Photoshop to compile large-scale vistas.

The reason for the large scale is so that the myriad of details can be poured over by an interested viewer. The work is designed to unfold over time rather that deliver an instant hit, as an advertising poster might.

In the photomontage exemplified by John Heartfield the joins of the multiple images can be seen. This is an intrinsic quality of such work. Seventy years on from Heartfield, digital technology’s intrinsic quality is the ability to remove all evidence of the stitching together of images. I make great use of this facility to call into question whether something is juxtaposed in life or in my fictional, but realistic, worlds.