I am studying A Level Photography and as part of my course I am completing a related study/dissertation on ‘Should photography be considered a fine art?’ I am studying your photography as part of my dissertation and would love to include your opinion / thoughts on this question and why you can state that your photography is fine art.

– Katie from the UK

Thanks for your questions Katie! This is a very involved topic, and one which has been the subject of much discourse since photographers first started pushing their work into Pictorialism and other fine art genres, and way from mere representational depiction and documentation. I am not an art historian nor am I a museum curator, so I can only comment on what my own beliefs are, which are based on my reading over the years.

Ultimately this question has been settled by decades of discourse and the gradual acceptance of photography as a form of fine art. That is due to the fact that so many photographers have pushed the medium to its limits in every direction, and I consider myself to be one of them. When I use my camera to capture images that ultimately end up being utilized as abstract works which have no relation to the original subject (and which make no attempt to represent the original subject) then I am in the role of artist and not simply photographic documentarian. That is one way of looking at it where my own work is concerned.

My motivation and concern is the presentation of a new visual language with my images. That that might sound a bit haughty but it also happens to be the truth. At a certain point I became much more motivated to create something new, and not just continue to capture scenes beautifully. I could have continued to do that for years and continued to sell them and make a lot of money. I didn’t need to push myself into new and risky territory as a photographer. I say ‘risky’ because any time you attempt to depict things in a new way you open yourself up to judgment and even contempt or ridicule. That is part of the territory as an artist.

An must follow their instincts and take chances in order to make new work. It’s a process of discovery. You first capture the work and perhaps you are not exactly certain what you have on your hands. You then start to “work” the images…to apply transformations based on your own perceptions, your previous experience as an artist, your own personal style, and your own interests. This is no different than a sculptor working a block of stone, or a painter working a canvas.

The difficulty that people seem to have in accepting photography as an equal art form as these others is that our hand is typically not physically on the actual work. Photographers first capture light with a mechanical process (and in the case of film, a chemical process too) based on the principles of optics. It can end there and we have a document of what is observed. That in itself is a worthwhile cause, but the photographer in this case is a technician not an artist. It’s not art yet as there is no effort to pass the image through the artist’s own filter of perception, imagination, and lived experience. Ultimately, if you are lucky, you hit upon a hint that something new and interesting is emerging.

So I have digressed quite a bit here. Getting back to your original question of why I consider my own photography as art. I consider that I am making artwork because I am creating the work along the lines of my own personal interpretation of the image, and utilizing my own visual style to portray them. As a photographer I have a particularly broad range which actually exemplifies my own journey as a photographer, and my own need to try new things and to evolve as an artist. My abstract and conceptual series are certainly the most ‘fine art’ of my work…more than the cityscapes and architectural images. It is fairly unusual for any artist to have such a broad range, and to have started out basically creating representational images but to have pushed into completely new visual territory.

What inspires your projects and travels?

– Addison from the USA and Ellis from Scotland

Where do you get artistic motivation?

– Addison from the USA

I have been asked this before and it’s not an easy question to answer. Motivation ebbs and flows. The more successful you become that definitely motivates you. Getting attention, winning awards, getting published all motivates you. But ultimately the only motivation that counts (and which is long-lasting) is the internal need and desire to create. Artists don’t just find motivation from external sources, they do what they do because nothing else satisfies them as much as creating their art and because it’s usually the only thing that they are really good at.

What is your thought process when starting a new project?

– Addison from the USA

I don’t overthink it…meaning I am generally not concerned with theory since I didn’t go to art school and it was never pounded into me as a student…although I have read plenty of texts that are required reading in art school. I usually become fascinated with an idea or a visual theme and start to flesh out the concept. I wish I could say that the marketability of the work is not a factor, but it is. I have had work that I lavished a lot of attention on that simply ended up taking my attention away from things that are in more demand. I definitely also see whether the concept has been done before, and whether I can possibly add a new perspective or not. If not, then I probably won’t pursue it as a series.

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I just wondered if it would be possible to find out where you get your inspiration from and what make you capture what you do e.g. why do capture cityscapes etc.

– Hollie from the UK

I have touched on this in quite a few interviews over the years, so by all means do check the links posted above as well. I started out capturing architecture and cityscapes out of necessity. I was a young amateur with very limited resources. I wasn’t from New York, and I grew up in a small town in Southwest Florida, so the big city was like a playground for me visually. I was attracted to the history, the architectural genres, the lore of the city, the complex interplay of cultures and styles that made up New York. At that age I wasn’t just shooting the city, I was experiencing it. New York was (and still is) a city of competing ethnic and cultural influences. I would shop in Hassidic Jewish areas of the lower east side and stop in their bakeries, I would buy my fruits, veggies and teas in Chinatown and eat Dim Sum with friends, same with buying curries and eating Indian food, Hispanic food, parades, and culture…it just never ended and the mix in New York was very stimulating to me. At the time I took a lot more street photography…as the years progressed my work became more focused on architecture and capturing the city, not so much people on the street…that’s because that is what sold and made me a living. Travel has also been a big inspiration, and I love to capture different cities as they each have their own character which develops over millennia (Europe) or by some futuristic master plan (Brasilia), or from a surge in wealth, investment and prestige (Dubai).

– Hollie from the UK

Good question. I would say that I don’t have influencers per se…don’t forget, I am now 52 and my career and mindset developed before social media even existed. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have photographers whose work I greatly admire. Sometimes I admire them for having mastered the same type of work I do, and other times it’s because they do something radically different than I do. Most of the time they don’t have huge social media following, and I tend to not really consider the number of followers to be an important factor looking at their work. So many excellent and devoted photographers and artists are very much nose to the grindstone and have a heavy-duty work ethic…a grueling, self-imposed and almost maniacal work ethic in many cases. They don’t often have time for posting, or find social media shallow and just aren’t into it. I am somewhere in the middle…I don’t find social media all that useful in reality, but I can’t afford to ignore it either. Some living artists/photographers whose work I admire are (in no particular order):

• Cindy Sherman – What can I say, her work is so clever, subversive, playful and thought provoking
• Massimo Listri – one of the premier fine art architectural photographers of our time
• Andrew Moore – a modern master. I first discovered his work through his books on Cuba and Russia. He also documents the post-industrial wasteland that is Detroit. Each photo a work of art in addition to documenting a particular moment in time.
• Matthew Pillsbury – I love his long-exposure work, which tends to be a bit more impromptu than mine
• Vik Muniz – he managed to make a political statement about poverty, consumption and waste into contemporary art…no small achievement!
• Luca Campigotto – excellent and well composed cityscapes and night scenes
• Richard Berenholtz and Jon Ortner – their books were my first inspiration to seriously start capturing the city back in the early 90’s.
• Debi Cornwall – I know Debi personally. Her documentary work is not easily grasped without first understanding the context. You have to work a bit to understand what is going on in these photos, but then when you finally understand what she has produced it’s an astonishing and powerful visual narrative dealing with the myths America perpetuates in order to justify our military and economic interventions
• James Nachtwey – the world’s most important war photographer. His poetic photos of the human toll of war are unfortgettable.
• Thomas Ruff – Ruff is one of the most innovative photographers of our time. His range of work is astonishingly broad and he tackles visual concepts in a completely innovative way each time. I don’t appreciate all of his series equally, but the ones I like I really like.
• Sebastiāo Salgado – A master of contemporary photography, both documentary and sweeping landscapes. He documents important themes such as environmental change and degradation and the scope of human labor, and he does it in such a poetic way.

These are just a few of the living photographers…if you add the no-longer-living (aka ‘dead’) photographers the list becomes quite long!

Photography Series

Photography Series