Fowlmead Photograph

Camera available at all times, my passion is photography and people, and nothing is more frustrating than seeing an image and not having your camera. People are the source of my inspiration to make pictures, their happiness, sadness or loneliness each emotion as poignant as the other. Living in the mining community for 20 years I understand the community spirit and camaraderie even after the mines shut in 1989. Documenting local history is very important for communities to understand their roots; I have been making pictures of the people within this local history in their own environment for a few years now. Recently I have discovered a whole network of ex-miners and their families who meet each week to document any information, images or artifacts for future generations. These meetings are the main source of my work currently; using video and medium format film I have recorded these meetings, and made images of what is left of the mine. I work digitally and with video however my main interest is film photography and experimenting with printing within the dark room, both with the scale of the image and the materials used for printing to produce an atmosphere within the image. A particular exhibition by Sally Mann had a dramatic affect on my work, the scale of her images, the skill she uses in the dark room to produce beautiful fine art images made me realise it is not the subject matter or the style of image taken, but how it is produced and presented that makes for a successful fine art image.