Visual Art Group MONOGRAPH 2018

VISUAL ART MONOGRAPH 2018

Kevin Marston

EDITOR: Nicki Gwynn-Jones FRPS (flychick110@googlemail.com)

DESIGNER: Paul Mitchell FRPS (paul@pmd-design.co.uk)

Visual Art Group Monographs are produced by the Royal Photographic Society Visual Art Group and are provided as part of the annual subscription of the Group.

2018

may

VISUAL ART MONOGRAPH 2018

Kevin Marston

Photographer, Image Maker, Musician and Teacher

I was born in Cornwall. The far west of Cornwall - in the area known as West Penwith. In his excellent book ‘Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place’ Philip Marsden observes that ‘the Penwith peninsula is to Cornwall what Cornwall is to the rest of the country – a loosely connected appendage stuffed with the residue of a thousand stories and mythical projections. Every rock, every hill and cliff has its tales, lore and sprites. It has a mood all its own. It certainly does. Most people who have spent time there cannot help being affected by the motion and rhythms

of cloud, wind and breaking seas – and experiencing that extraordinary light - playing on the mysterious shapes of granite cliffs, tors and megaliths. Growing up within this landscape gave me a deep appreciation of natural beauty and a respectful awareness of the power of the sea and it’s ever changing conditions. The place draws you in with an almost hypnotic force. It’s as though there’s a secret buried deep in the ground. Not always something you can see, but something you feel.

Vatersay:

Flying in to the ‘airport’ at Barra can be a precarious undertaking. The plane lands on the beach in the wide shallow bay of Traigh Mhor at the Northern tip of the island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. It is a unique experience, being the only airport in the world where scheduled flights use the beach as a runway. Three of these runways are set out in a triangle on the sand, marked by permanent wooden poles at their ends. At high tide these runways are under the sea, so flight timings are important!

I had gone there to escape. I have had periods of depression during my life where the colour seems to drain out of the days and blank walls seem to be around every corner turned. I needed to recharge and re-energise. I have found at these times, when ebb is low, that making images gives me a positive kick, a sense of meaningful purpose. A way to step outside of myself. I agree with the Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert when he says ‘I think of photography like therapy….’

Here was peace, solitude and serene beauty. The quietness almost deafening. I could walk, look, sit, listen and absorb this special place until the time felt right to make the images.

I crossed over the small causeway to the small island of Vatersay, the southernmost inhabited island in the Outer Hebrides as well as being the westernmost permanently inhabited place in Great Britain.

‘…The eye should learn to listen before it looks..’

Robert Frank

My art teacher at the Grammar School for Boys in Penzance was very fond of telling us that in 20 years of teaching he could only remember one boy who could draw! He would take us down to the harbour, sit us on the wall 20 ft above the water and tell us to look at it and ‘draw what we felt.’ He was

refreshingly bohemian. He would then retire to a public house across the road, telling us to make our own way back to school when we had ‘had enough.’ Obviously Ofsted and Health & Safety hadn’t been invented then.

I have probably been influenced and inspired more by painters/sculptors than photographers. In no particular order –

Patrick Heron

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Peter Lanyon

Ben Nicholson

Alfred Wallis

Bryan Wynter

Barbara Hepworth

Richard Diebenkorn

Kurt Jackson

Terry Frost..... and many more

I went to school with Peter Lanyon’s son, Matthew. Peter Lanyon is an artist whose work I am particularly fond of. His blending of styles such as abstract expressionism, colour field painting and organic abstraction (guided by Ben Nicholson) led to the creation of some very vibrant and powerful work. Always both startling and uplifting, but at the same time deeply rooted in the powerful environment of Cornwall.

I also like his somewhat irreverent attitude to ‘art.’ At times, apparently, if he was having trouble with a canvas, he would lay it on the ground and drive over it in his car.

‘It usually improved it,’ he would say.

I have had no formal training in photography. The impulse and desire to make images with the camera initially came from the frustration at my lack of ability to draw or paint what I wished to create.

walkers on the cobb

Some days I can make no images at all. Other days I can do nothing but make images. Each carries equal weight in the creative process.

scow and stone

when the north wind blows

To paraphrase Ansel Adams, I like to feel that I am making images rather than taking photographs. I am not particularly interested in merely documenting what is in front of my lens. I am more interested in trying to interpret the way I feel about it.

pennsans revisited

pennsans revisited 2

I’m in a factory yard in Bridport, Dorset. I found my way in through a hole in the fence and I’ve been looking at this wall for about 45 minutes. The wall is made from corrugated iron which has been painted in the past but is now peeling and rusting into a beautiful state of decay. I am often drawn to these places. I like to work at them carefully with all senses open to possibilities – like perhaps the construction of a poem or a piece of music. I shut out my surroundings and try to focus down into an almost meditative state….

Elliott Erwitt

This series I am working on I have called ‘found landscapes’ - landscapes within landscapes. It is a relatively sporadic body of work that is added to when opportunity presents the situation and then the mind/eye/ shutter reach a happy agreement.

A woman has come out from the factory office and is cautiously standing behind me, drinking a mug of coffee and smoking a cigarette.

‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you’ she says.

‘Why are you taking pictures of a boring rusty wall?’

I consider my response but decide that perhaps it’s time to move on.

‘…photography is an art of observation – It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see, and everything to do with the way you see them.’

‘The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.’

Annie Leibovitz

bank

moonrise

I was travelling light so I had only one camera body and one lens with me. Not a particularly wise move, as on the first day there the lens seized up and stopped communicating with the camera body. Great start.

I had wanted to make some images in the partly abandoned village of Beli, near the Tramuntana forest in the north of the island.

I considered my options. Getting the lens repaired was not going to be possible in this location, while returning to the mainland would take too long. I thought about a book I had been looking at written by an American photographer called Chase Jarvis. He called his book ‘The Best Camera: Is the One That’s With You.’ I don’t think he was the first to use that phrase but the message was a good one. I had my iPhone with me which had a working camera in it. Up until now I had only used it as a sort of note/sketch book to take and save visual ideas for later work with a DSLR. I had not considered using it exclusively for any creative work. Here was the perfect opportunity to try – and, to be frank, if I wanted to make images, this was the only way I was going to be able to.

I spent the next few days immersing myself in the technical possibilities that this small device gave me, and rejoicing at once at the relatively small weight I was now carrying. I used Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) and Multiple Exposures (ME) and found several Apps that allowed me to do all the editing I needed to do ‘in phone.’

This was a bit of a Eureka moment for me, and since then I have used the iPhone camera more extensively for work that benefits from the obvious advantages of using a smaller and mostly always available device.

Seven years ago I went to Croatia. My destination was the small island of Cres. It was another escape. A bid for freedom (albeit temporary) from a job back home that was slowly eroding my energy and spirit.

beli

Parallels between music and photography are fairly well documented and I certainly see the similarities between the technical disciplines involved in both, as well as the multisensory processing that goes on in simplifying and refining framing and composition, speeding up reactions and heightening overall awareness and sensitivity. These processes are ever present in musical performance and appreciation also.

Ansel Adams said that he would often hear music while photographing (not in a sentimental way but structurally). ‘You see the relationships of shapes. I would call it a design sense. It’s the beginning of seeing what the photograph is.’

Hearing the light is another way of putting it. It occurs on an intuitive level but derives partly from practice and repetition. By breaking free from the form that you are trying to master allows true expression and freedom from deliberate action to flourish.

Music has always played a very important part in my life, both as a listener and performer.

riverman

walking man

I have always tried (with varying degrees of success) to not be encumbered with or defined by too many rules. In my photography work I do not obsess about gear. I use the camera and lens that will help me to get the look and feel that I want. I don’t carry or use a tripod very often except for very long exposures.

I don’t read and follow camera manuals religiously either, or worry about the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to make photographs. I enjoy the thrill of experimenting and finding new ways of expression.

I rarely leave the house with a definite photographic plan - I prefer to let the day, weather, conditions and feel set the course for the image making. Some days will lead nowhere – others can hit on a rich seam.

‘I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.’

Wayne Miller

bight

cobb

boats at beer

rust never sleeps

rust never sleeps 2

(Right) tempest

blue boat

porto fiscardo

walking to gibraltar point

ironwork at lepe

dover wight falling slowly

turning tide

west bay

west bay

sivota

door - found landscape

(Left) wave - found landscape

boats at beer 2

embankment

(Right) scarista

“Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how?’ while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why?’ Personally, I’ve always preferred inspiration to information.“

Man Ray

Some of the music involved in the creation of these images I have included in a playlist. I invite you to listen to some or all of them while you view.

A Suggested Playlist

Trimbas in Quarters – Moondog

Tiny Island – Leo Kottke

Jeg Har Sa Lun En Hytte – B J Cole

Greenwich Pier – Ana Silvera

Sketches of Spain – Miles Davis

Song to the Siren – Tim Buckley

Introit Opus 6 – Gerald Finzi

Requiem Opus 9. Introit & Kyrie – M. Durufle

Inner City, City Lights – Esbjorn Svensson Trio

Fletcher Moss Park – Matthew Halsall

Suite Bergamasque. L.75 – Claude Debussy

Space 21 (petrichor) from ‘Sleep’ – Max Richter

Gloria’s Step – Bill Evans Trio

Etude No. 5 – Philip Glass

0952 – Olafur Arnalds

www.kevinmarston.com

http://rps.org/special-interest-groups/visual-art