New Work at November 2009
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As part my “paying” job as photographer for the social column in my local newspaper, I
found that my subjects often wanted to see their picture after I took it, almost as though
their own reality were only complete once they had been documented. With the
omnipresence of digital photography, it seems everyone carries a camera in their pocket
furiously documenting their lives and spreading those photographs around the Internet to
substantiate their existence. And with digital photography comes the photo editing
software. Previously difficult and painstaking dark-room manipulations are made at the
click of a mouse. Where it is often thought that photographers are among the most honest
of artists because of the documentary aspect of their medium, now even the most rank
amateur can produce Uelsmann-like worlds or photographic textures and surfaces which
used to take hours to achieve in the dark-room. It is in this world of photo manipulations
that I have lately found my creative juices flowing. That our reality is so tied to these
photographs and that that reality is so easily changed into fantasy is one of the wonders I
immerse myself into when I work. Another is that this digital world, completely made up of
discrete pixels, when enlarged to 57” x 80”, becomes intensely pure. When Mondrian was
looking for the purest form of imagery, he would have loved the world of pixels! I revel in
the textures and values and colors and lines peculiar to the digital world, all formed by tiny
little squares even smaller than the tesserae of mosaics. These odd and rich
characteristics come together to make odd and rich images, all from a camera and a
computer; images which combine aspects that, in the world of film, would have been
characterized as BAD, with completely new possibilities applied until the image becomes
something new; reality unrecognizable.
found that my subjects often wanted to see their picture after I took it, almost as though
their own reality were only complete once they had been documented. With the
omnipresence of digital photography, it seems everyone carries a camera in their pocket
furiously documenting their lives and spreading those photographs around the Internet to
substantiate their existence. And with digital photography comes the photo editing
software. Previously difficult and painstaking dark-room manipulations are made at the
click of a mouse. Where it is often thought that photographers are among the most honest
of artists because of the documentary aspect of their medium, now even the most rank
amateur can produce Uelsmann-like worlds or photographic textures and surfaces which
used to take hours to achieve in the dark-room. It is in this world of photo manipulations
that I have lately found my creative juices flowing. That our reality is so tied to these
photographs and that that reality is so easily changed into fantasy is one of the wonders I
immerse myself into when I work. Another is that this digital world, completely made up of
discrete pixels, when enlarged to 57” x 80”, becomes intensely pure. When Mondrian was
looking for the purest form of imagery, he would have loved the world of pixels! I revel in
the textures and values and colors and lines peculiar to the digital world, all formed by tiny
little squares even smaller than the tesserae of mosaics. These odd and rich
characteristics come together to make odd and rich images, all from a camera and a
computer; images which combine aspects that, in the world of film, would have been
characterized as BAD, with completely new possibilities applied until the image becomes
something new; reality unrecognizable.
| R. Schofield |
| Click on the thumbnails to see full-size images. The usual size is 57" x 80" |
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