Ant Smith

Born and bred in the shadow of the Pennines on the interface between urban and rural life I have always found my place 'in-between' - a life of contrasts.

Working for many a year as a highly disciplined software engineer in life and mission-critical systems across the globe I have a keen analytical mind; but also a compassionate and creative soul, a writer and photographer.

I believe categories, labels, are for shelves not people - and I seek to blur the boundaries of identity. My writing aims to make the beautiful ugly and my photography, the mundane extraordinary. For people and things are never simply 'this of that'; for all things express the contradiction of the human condition: neither self nor herd; neither transient not eternal; neither physical pain nor spiritual bliss - but something other, something in-between.

I photograph the unseen, the otherness of our lives.

My first degree is in pure computer science (Teesside '85-'89) and my masters in playwriting (Birmingham University '93). As a photographer, I am wholly self-taut.
I mainly draw my inspiration from the connectedness of things. The musicality of visual compositions, the movement of the photographer's hands under the light of the enlarger, I see song and dance in the frozen image.

I work with digital imagery because of the fact of reality that it contains, whilst providing the flexibility to reveal that fact within greater truths. I am greatly influenced by the approaches of Edward Weston, Ansell Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Many Ray and Lee Miller; although my images are for this millennium, not the prior!

I have participated in many smaller exhibitions and my work has been published in magazines (e.g. The New Statesmen) and on book covers.