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I am a photographer. During my time at Kingston university, I have worked with an independent creative agency: Togada. My time there has been enjoyable, and I have worked on video-marketing campaigns and various wedding shoots and studio sessions. The combination of studying Graphic design and practicing my skillset through live briefs has fine-tuned my ability to explore and experiment with ideas and practical techniques. The natural progression from finding my passion of photography would have been to enrol in a photographic degree. However, the part of photography which interested me most was its storytelling capabilities. The narrative behind the image is the most vital part to inviting your audience into your work. Through utilising the skill-set of graphic design and its emphasis on the power of communication; the degree has left me with the desire to speak through my work as a professional, freelance photographer.
One of my most engaging projects: ‘Twenty-four-seven’ was a one-week documentation of seven different service stations on the M1 motorway. The process of observing people’s behaviour in a confined space for such a long duration forced me to question each image I was capturing. The journey through all the seven service stations was tiring and arduous; on the other hand, I was able to see what typically goes unnoticed or unseen. Service stations are designed to be visited for no longer than two hours. Parking costs, the number of facilities and the floorplan of the buildings dictate that after one hundred and twenty minutes of staying there, you will want to leave and continue your journey.
This approach of being patient with photography and taking time to create images is where the industry can grow. People have become obsessed with the immediacy of photography; when people think of taking a photo, they rarely consider it to be a time-consuming process. With increasingly powerful smart-phone cameras and the instant results available to view on snap-chat and Instagram, people rush through every-day life capturing the things right in front of them. Whilst this is perfectly acceptable and poses itself as a starting point for some, I believe there’s much more to the every-day life than the food we eat or the landmarks we visit. By turning around and capturing the things that are behind us, we can start to bring depth and meaning into the compositions we assemble.
Photographers such as Martin Parr and Sam Mellish have an ideology about photography which suggests that the every-day should be documented and observed. Their work is mainly observational, and their strengths rely on patience in seeing the world around them and identifying satire, emotion and obscenity. Martin Parr is famous for his work on what ‘Britishness’ looks like. One of his many books: ‘Martin Parr – We Love Britain’ explores the themes of what people in Britain do and don’t do. This methodology of photography seems to have fallen as of recent years and I am going to strive to reinstate observational photography back into the industry. Through a combination of freelance work, personal projects and part-time studio roles, I would like to push the medium to be bolder, more patient and to encourage other photographers around me to look and to see.
