emerging

I have a 2000 quid camera, yet my best stuff is on a cheap mobile phone; it allows me a more painterly approach. I've embraced shadows, blurs, washes of colours, distortions of rain and fogged windows . . . and through it, emerges . . . something . . . a subject. Prompted by . . . a convergence of some special people.

A dream of a friend, and the openness and honesty of two others has given me courage to look at myself, to freak out, then settle - perhaps changed. The tug of the old is ever present - never banished, I think. But . . .

I wish I could write more poetically, obliquely, evocatively. Sometimes, perhaps, I need words to complement these images . . .

Also, I read a little piece on Leiter when I hunted for some of his photos, and something of me became clear - something I saw as a hinderence, actually, might be a strength.

"Leiter's sensibility.placed him outside the visceral confrontations with urban anxiety associated with photographers such as Robert Frank or William Klein. Instead, for him the camera provided an alternate way of seeing, of framing events and interpreting reality. He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances."

Martin Harrison

Leiter's approach was markedly more subtle, more indirect, more abstract, more emotionally expressive, less pugnacious. Instead of getting in the middle of the action, he preferred to stay off to the side, quiet and unnoticed.

From Utata