THE GREEN GOAT AT THE HALL OF THREE PURITIES - ( for Hua Huang ) Print

Close to the Green Goat Temple in the ancient city of Chengdu is the exquisite calligraphy of the Tang Tablet. Here I have brought them together. In my personal work I am not a purist photographer but photography has long been my tool of choice because of its fundamental and inescapable grounding in reality which I see as the generator of all imagination. The beauty of the finely crafted classical monochrome print is undeniable but many years ago I tired of the puritanism which I felt deadened the delight of discovery. The Zen of it all might leave the photographer enhanced but to the viewer such images too often seem to decrease and recede into the perfection of technique rather than expand the fields of vision. A rose is a rose is a rose but its mazing scent and its thorn against the breast conjure danger and complexity seldom embraced by the purist. Journeying in the craftwork of a pedigreed train is best felt when it bursts out of the tunnel into expanding colour and light - and when you can drive your own discoveries beyond the tracks laid down by the agenda of others. The freedom of a child to be lost without fear. I like the fascination of occlusions in my optics rather than the predictable perfection of well-behaved mathematics. Seduction and possibility hold more attraction than purity and certainty. In many of the works shown here I have developed the micro detail which makes these images best viewed as larger prints. I use this energetic texture to challenge the perception - from where are realities derived - to where are they projected? My path explores form, colour, surface levels and possible meanings. I push off from the shore but leave the journey to the winds and to the tides. The concept of destination is something I have never understood. I am looking to create sideways glances rather than documents or statements. The glimmer intrusions of parallel worlds. In the realms of Art, the camera is the only true voyeur - on the real battlefields, in the satin boudoirs of power, under the volcano, on the snub nose of a probe - it sees worlds we are too timid to seek - lets us imagine we can directly care. My philosophy - what informs how I see the world and put it into what I present? - The failure of humanity, through the ages, is that we have been taught, and have come to believe, that some future Heaven is more desirable than Eden. Our content to be what we are is destroyed when we look in the mirror and see ourselves haloed with gurus, profits and angels. Personal delight, beauty and peace are not things which can be bought or taught by any form of teacher - these things do not come from adrenaline hits of small cans of over-priced holy water laced with caffeine. The things which sustain us, give us nourishment, grace and stimulation, lie freely around us. But we have to find them alone and pay for them with patience, questioning, openness and the reduction of “self”. Maybe that’s not a very 21st Century philosophy. Take the time to listen to the storytellers, folks - and to the shamans and the poets - not the modern ones who only, endlessly, talk about themselves, but listen to the ones whose stories multiply our worlds and show us unfamiliar colours - who challenge the unconsciousness brought on by the narcosis of comfort and security. Except for one or two obvious composites, all the images here are derived from single, in-camera, exposures. Everything you see was once, for me, for a brief moment, some kind of reality on the other side of the looking glass.