Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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