My photographs explore shape, surface quality, time and function. Many of the subjects are recorded after their perceived usefulness has expired; caught before decay sets in; still, they seem to possess an electric presence. You might half-see figures, faces, familiar signs. But these are just simple studies of ordinary things – often encountered by chance then recorded– things which I discover, or decide, are worth representing just to share the observation. The starting point – one of those 'made you look' moments – was borne out of my obsessive approach to peeling an orange: the desire to complete the task uninterrupted, leaving a singular husk of evidence that the fruit within (now consumed, of course) had ever existed. What has developed from that beginning is a more emotional response to things we take for granted then discard, whether man-made or from nature. The surprise is in the mundane. I use digital tools and techniques to make these pictures. The images are collected and processed with minimum intrusion but with an eye on the superreal: the aim simply to intensify what's already there. Richard Gregory |