Click on the cover to view the book… and click your way through the pages.

The little book tool is pretty simple and if for any reason you can’t view it, let me know. It isn’t suitable for small screens at the moment, but any smaller and it would not be readable anyway. It’s difficult to effectively show a book online.

The physical version is 12 x 12 inches, hard cover and 52 pages.

The pastel blues, purples and pinks are so fleeting. I want to live somewhere with a prolonged twilight. Somewhere the sky reflects infinite colours of subtle variation. And the fairytale is prolonged.

I don’t have many vivid memories of my grandfather. I sometimes wonder if I had photographed him, would it feel different to look at the pictures? Would I feel more connected?

Even seeing myself in images as a child, I don’t feel a sense of familiarity. So it seems like a struggle to feel familiar with my ancestors in old photographs.

Prior to the invention of photography, was there a deeper sense of struggle for remembrance? Hearing stories, maybe even seeing and touching belongings or creations, must surely not have yielded such strong feelings of connectedness. Or perhaps the need to make significant use of one’s imagination might have resulted in a greater sense of fulfilment.

Perhaps the more clues to knowing a person, through the viewing of a photograph, the more questions that arise.

I used to imagine what it would be like being one of those kids at school who had shifted house six times, changed schools, swapped friends and started over. I never thought my family would move as they enjoyed the comfort of familiarity and stability.

When we moved to a new house I was 16 so it was not really like those kids I had observed. But looking back I notice changes in feeling. Houses became more modern. Everything became clean, bright and white. My new home felt more open and less like a cocoon of safety.

I see more of my childhood home in my mother’s childhood home. I never lived there but it still has that feeling which reminds me…well not of anything specifically. There’s just an overwhelming sense of feeling reminded.

The wallpaper is discoloured, becoming brown in parts. Even where some has broken away revealing a whiter wall, it still feels homely. The patterns on the wallpaper seem to be of endless variety. Tiling, lining, skirting… There appears almost endless details.

Personification has always been somewhat of a fascination for me. The human brain operates by relating information to a database. It makes sense that in trying to understand the world around us we draw comparisons with what we know about ourselves.

This process involves projecting human characteristics onto animals and inanimate objects. It is also possible to suggest that we apply familiar notions of the self to other people. This perhaps does not satisfy the definition of personification. The term ”selfification” may be more appropriate.

Although the photograph is a very recent invention, it has already cemented itself into our familiarity as an object and as a concept. Its ability to capture the moment is unrivalled and this is particularly true in the case of the person as the subject.

It is my argument that through its close relationship with portraiture, the photograph itself prompts an unconscious tendency for us to project a personification (or indeed selfification) onto the subject of the image.

I hope to draw attention to this behaviour such that people might become more aware of how their mind perceives a photograph, an inanimate object or another person.

What does it mean for us to compare almost everything to ourselves? Are we hoping to better understand the other for the sake of this other, or so we can be content in understanding for ourselves?

Tunnels seem to personify unhappiness.

There is no such thing as perfection. No matter how much one strives for it, the goal can never be reached.

Many take their fulfilment from the pursuit. Many are happy with near enough. Many are never fulfilled. Never being content with the first, I have always found myself alternating between the two latter options.

Over the previous few years I have discovered another solution. Allowing oneself to be open to opportunity, to give time to the unconscious and to embrace the random.

In producing artwork I have found the harder I try the less the results feel like an honest part of me.

Sometimes it has taken the serendipitous to make me realise this. Mistakes and accidents can open a window to new worlds where we can learn so much more about ourselves and discover new experiences.

At 98 years old my grandmother could no longer look after herself and finally had to leave her house. Her husband, Neville, died about 10 years ago. He was a carpenter and built the house himself.

It was also home to my mother and her four sibilings. I remember going to many family get-togethers with the extended family.

It still has the same feel; the same atmosphere. The bulk of my memories of the house are from when I was quite young. As I am the youngest of the generation, most family had grown up and moved on. So gatherings here were scarce in more recent years. Therefore, in my mind I held onto a more childlike image of the house.

Taking the time to walk in and out of each room slowly, thinking about who had once lived there and how each room was used, I noticed much more. Viewing through the lens, without the aid of the wonderfully advanced human eye, darkness is enhanced and the light seems to have more a physical presence.

My grandmother, Ivy, may have had to move on, but the house still remains. Hopefully it does so at least for her lifetime. Her memory fails her in the present but she still describes vividly the distant past. There are so many more memories in between and so many to be found in the house that Neville built.

I wonder what it would be like lying alone in the room where your daughters first slept 60 years ago. All the time in the world to think. Wondering what your daughters are thinking now that their own daughters have left. Would you keep the curtains closed some days?

It seems the more a house ages the more colour appears. Carpets fray; floors scuff; walls fade; benches stain; door handles become worn. Yet it’s more than this. There’s a remnance filled with the traces of those who have lived within the spaces. There’s an aura filled with the human emotions pieced together over time. There’s an atmosphere filled with colour.

Some Feedback

Email from: Sasha_Ann (sasha_colchane@yahoo.com)
Date: 18 June 2010 14:05
Subject: Photo story

Your Grandmother could’ve stayed in her home if you or someone had unselfishly thought to care for her.
Now she’s gone and you think you can cash in on her ‘art-’life’ lol.

My reply to Sasha_Ann’s unreachable email address…

Hi Sasha,

My grandmother lived alone for many years after her husband died. She did very well for herself but with time needed more assistance. She has five children and they all did their bit in looking after her. Her many grandchildren also lended a hand. As well as this she had nurses assist her. Her neighbours too. She was unselfishly cared for every day.

After many health scares including falls resulting in nervous hospital stays, doctors recommended my grandmother have full time professional care. She and her supportive family eventually agreed to the advice.

She is much happier today and always talks about what a great place she is now in.

I have never made a cent from the images I took of her house. I put the images together into a book and gave it to her. I often visit her with my mother and we show her the book again. Some days she recognises a few of the images and it brings a smile to her face. Unfortunately her memory fails to serve her well in her old age and she has trouble remembering anything but her childhood.

Next month she turns 100. I’ll be sure to take many photographs at the occasion and I will have no qualms in showing others and not feeling selfish or that I am cashing in.

Pete.

A single moment of a person’s existence captured forever so that we can attempt to see further into their soul. A resolution matters little. It’s what we learn about human nature and ourselves along the way, which makes sharing this moment worthwhile.

My dear friend and serial model Ashleigh shaved her head last year. She asked me along to witness the event. I expected it to be somewhat humorous, but ended up asking if I could come back again the following night to take her portrait.

My feelings toward the resulting image have fluctuated between varying degrees of ambivalence. At its essence is my initial intent to produce a portrait of raw human emotion depending upon the interpretation of the viewer. I wanted to completely detach my work from construction and let it happen naturally and honestly.

I did not always succeed in this and the process with which I went about shooting Inner Confrontation remains in my memory as a little forced. Subsequent sittings with other models left me unfulfilled as I seemed to go off track.

I find it hard to be open with others. If I reach a comfortable place I have a tendency to hold nothing back, but until then my automatic instinct is to behave how I think others would want me to behave. Overcoming this is a big part of my attraction to portraiture. I feel that gaining a greater understanding of others will not only benefit me in understanding them, but also myself.

Loneliness may inspire poetry. Isolation may be a good time to write poetry. But there’s nothing poetic about the feeling of being alone.

My image was used on the cover of a book entitled I Made You to Find Me by Jane Hedley.

When the designer asked to use my image for a book on poetry, I wondered if they’d really comprehended my title and accompanying text. I realised the words “poetry” and “typewriter” brought them to my image. I just felt that my title did not exactly paint ponies for poetry.

I decided that it probably made no difference to them. I have always insisted my work should be read for the individual and that there is no correct method of interpretation. However, I have a volatile memory and forget to be myself at times. So I was eventually content knowing everybody would see it from a different perspective and no title could change that.

Much, much later on I received a package in the mail from Ohio, USA. I sat down and scratched my head for a little while wondering what it might be. I could have just torn it open, but for some reason we peculiar beings take a moment, don’t we?

When I found myself staring into a photograph I had captured (one which I’d never actually printed), I finally allowed myself to see it as an object and an idea. Not only had I not been open to ideas outside my own selfish thoughts, but I had never really comprehended my own title.

No sooner than I had set eyes upon the contents of the package, I realised the very nature of the author’s work, I Made You to Find Me, illustrated the connection to my image.

Before the days of the handheld consumer camera there was a bit of a fad in buying these little viewing boxes with a lens and mirror where you could basically walk around holding it out to see the image on a little 2D plane. It sounds counter-intuative to us but we couldn’t understand, as today cameras are part of every day society. I often choose to shoot square medium format with a waist level viewfinder and I have realised the similarities with this old toy.

• Medium Format because it is big, but not big enough to make it difficult to carry around easily.
• Square because my creative decision-making isn”t influenced by a rectangle with a bias given a particular orientation. I always feel I am trying to fit as much of a scene within the constraints of a rectangle, but with the square I’m more relaxed and my unconscious mind seems to work with my emotions to determine the composition.
• A Waist Level Viewfinder because photographic art to me is about seeing in another dimension. Just standing on my head is enough to please the part of me always wanting something new. So being able to preview the resulting film to scale in the palm of my hand allows me to look ahead and stop when the visual clicks with my feelings and the feelings I wish to convey.

“Patients” began from looking into photographic history and in particular post-mortem photographs. It’s a journey through the modern art timeline and an analysis of the portraiture canon.

The portrait is traditionally an interaction between the viewer and the eyes of the actor. The direction of the actor’s gaze allows the actor to determine where the viewer is to look.

The post-mortem photograph seems to defy portraiture in that the actor is not alive to interact with the viewer. Of course this is a contradiction in itself as the life imaged in the photograph is lost at the moment of capture. It would seem, however, that we generally place some importance on whether the actor was alive or dead at the prior moment.

Therefore, what if the actor is alive but their eyes are closed? Does one assume rest or death? Does one attempt to interact with the shut eyes or does one become the voyeur and take advantage of viewing without being matched with a gaze.

What if the viewer does not know if the subject is alive? Does the viewer have the evidence to conclude they are alive? What separates such a photograph from a post mortem photograph captured in the 19th century?

As the author of the series at its conclusion, I rarely look upon the images and see the people without life. I think about death when I see them, but I think about death anyway and this could simply be my mindset. Would I react differently to the images if I had not created the works and didn’t know the people?

I think about the portrait as a genre, as an artform, as a memory. I think about who and I think about why. If I can make others think, then I have achieved what I strive for.