Postby Walter Glover » 17 Jan 2015, 09:47
Maris,
My apologies for the delayed response but the site was down and then I forgot.
I search LFPA and only came up with Lebanon Family Planning Association. However, I doubt I missed much because verbal explanations of visual statements are pretty much anathema to me along with floor talks and artists' statements.
But, but way of attempted explanation in the hope of clarification:
There are probably as many genres of any approach to image making as there are image makers ..... or even many more.
I have spent an inordinate percentage of my career shooting in studios and I love it at whatever scale of production I may be working at. This single figure stuff, of course, is at a miniscule scale and, in essence, very simple.
I guess I should also point out that I do not, as a rule, strive for stand alone images and so whatever I present is bound to be a slither from a spectrum of narrative. These images are all part of a far broader celebration of the inherent beauty of physical and psychological diversity. And that sentiment also includes my other, non-figure, exploits. There are threads of motifs generated with scant concern for the stand-alone icon.
I have a couple of inclusions that possibly set me at odds with some of my peers: I don't use a plain while background, I vary the illumination, I vary the scale.
In the series there are subjects of all sexes, all sizes and all ages. Another element in the arrangements is my own personal quest for enjoyment and amusement. So yes, I have shot my petite North American muse quite often because the intellectual experience of spending time and effort with her agile body and even more agile mind is a model fee well spent.
I shot countless tens of thousands of 'figure in landscape' as commercial pursuit and it holds no appeal for me. And it took me over a decade to get out of the mindset of the 'hero' image that would sell on a newsstand and into just making pictures for the sake of the pictures (or series of pictures).
I can't do as much of this as I would like because it is expensive paying models and the costs are eclipsed by the difficulties in sourcing 'non-modelly' types with the courage to reveal themselves as they actually are.
Like most other folk, I suppose, I dream of just what I could do if I won the lottery — IF I ever purchased a ticket.
Cheers,
Walter Glover
"We see things not as they are. We see them as we are."
— Emanuel Kant