Desolation
...and why my books and zines are filled with it.
Desolation.
It pervades all of my photographs and I was asked recently whether this is something I intentionally aim for in my work - both my long term projects and books and also my zines, including the photographs in my recent collection of football pitches, ‘In the shadow’, seen here.
And my answer was both yes and no. Well no and yes in fact.
The nature of the places I travel to to make my work, those filled with a history (or very near future) of conflict, trauma, loss and sorrow, mean that the 'desolation’ seen in my images is unavoidable. It is why I am there and so it frames my feelings as I drive to and then walk around these sites on arrival, before I start making photographs. This is an integral part of my process, to allow the site and its past to seep into me as I walk and look. How does the visual evidence in front of me marry with the knowledge I bring to it, through research and stories told to me.
So when I then bring my camera to my eye (or my eye to it when working with a tripod) my view is shrouded and directed by these emotions. So the framing, the emptiness, the light, the time, the atmosphere…these are all the emotional elements I am trying to put in my frame.
So even in my zines, the collections of images made on the way to, or on the peripheries of these sites, the photographs are made with the same underlying air of desolation.
Hopefully I will see some of you next week at either Photo London or A Bigger Book Fair.
Thank you as ever for reading and your support of my work.
My best wishes and please, take care of yourself.
Marc
Hi Marc - My sense of desolation has been permanently dominated by Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row', which obsessed me at age 14 or so, and still feels remarkably accurate to me in verbal terms. And your photographs are the visual embodiment for me.
desolotation, it is my long term thing, but i call it peripheries