Richard Brown

As a photographer, my work goes against the grain of tradition. If you ask most photographers what they photograph, they will say people, landscapes, urban settings, fashion, or a range of other popular things. I however, am attracted by the everyday. Things that are so common it doesn’t catch the eye; empty spaces that are not empty, and things that are hiding in plain sight. Things in the periphery of vision: moving water in a river; shadows, fleeting and insubstantial; crude graffiti so ubiquitous that we train our eyes not to see it. These every day spaces are constantly changing, requiring a daily pilgrimage to photograph subjects before they vanish. These spaces and objects prompt me to capture their ephemeral semi-existence. I force mistakes with the camera using various techniques such as home developed film, homemade lenses (pinhole), a slow shutter speed, and intentional camera movement. Through experimentation and play, each image taken is never the same twice. There are a few photographers who stand as influential in this anti-aesthetic: Wolfgang Tilmans for one.