Photographers
|
John Blakemore
John Blakemore was born in Coventry in 1936. Self-taught in photography, he began freelancing in 1956, working first for Black Star, and then in a variety of studios. He is Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Derby, where he taught from 1970 to 2001. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is included in many national and international collections. He has been the recipient of many Arts Council awards, a British Council Traveling Exhibition and in 1992 won the prestigious Fox Talbot Award for Photography. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
The earliest photograph in this exhibition was made in 1983, the latest in 2005. Almost twenty years during which the tulip has been a significant and continuous motif in my photography. In talking about the work I often describe it as my 'Tulip Journey'. At various points at moments of apparent conclusion, a book, an exhibition, one inevitably ponders on what such a prolonged period of work has been about, what one has learned, what kind of journey one has made. To attempt an answer.
I learned a little about tulips, not much, less perhaps than i could have learned in a few afternoons at the library. My search was not a botanical one, nor, though i learned a little history (i hadn't previously known of the period characterised as 'tulipomania'), an historical one. I looked at images which might not otherwise have engaged my attention, obscure flower paintings, botanical illustrations, not however as an art historian but as an image maker seeking ideas, correspondences.
The tulip journey then was ultimately a visual journey. An investigation and discovery of visual possibilities. The tulip became an object of attention, of fascination, became both text and pretext for an activity of picture making. The photographs are not finally, or not primarily, about tulips, they contain tulips.
To say this is not to diminish the role of the tulip. Had the vase of flowers on the table when i made the first tentative exposures exploring the space of my kitchen table been, lets say, daffodils, then the journey, if it had ever begun, would i am sure have been shorter. The daffodil, delightful though it is, exhibits a stubborn rigidity of form, lives and dies at attention. The tulip however is a flower of constant metamorphosis, stretches towards the light, gestures to occupy the space.
I spent much time just contemplating the flowers. The camera far from my thoughts. Delighting in the tulips' voluptuous presence. Such periods of contemplation, of visual pleasure, are always a part of my work process. A deepening of my experience of, my relationship to, my subject.
One cannot photograph experience, but to have lived it can change and develop habitual ways of seeing, of knowing.
To return to picture making - when i made the first simple photographs of a vase of tulips on my kitchen table i could not have made, could not have imagined the later series, the variety of images that i would finally make. They became possible only through the extended visual enquiry that i allowed myself.The activity of picture making also made it necessary to extend my use of the photographic process as i imagined different photographs, different print tonalities, and had to discover the means to realise them.
Someone asked me recently how i knew when a piece of work was finished. I know it when the making of a photograph is no longer necessary, the moment of recognition, the acknowledgement of subject occurs, but to look is sufficient. This has not so far happened with tulips, i still delight in their presence, still occasionally photograph them. 'Tulipa - Petals 2005' was made eleven years after the publication of 'The Stilled Gaze' officially ended my tulip journey.
The earliest photograph in this exhibition was made in 1983, the latest in 2005. Almost twenty years during which the tulip has been a significant and continuous motif in my photography. In talking about the work I often describe it as my 'Tulip Journey'. At various points at moments of apparent conclusion, a book, an exhibition, one inevitably ponders on what such a prolonged period of work has been about, what one has learned, what kind of journey one has made. To attempt an answer.
I learned a little about tulips, not much, less perhaps than i could have learned in a few afternoons at the library. My search was not a botanical one, nor, though i learned a little history (i hadn't previously known of the period characterised as 'tulipomania'), an historical one. I looked at images which might not otherwise have engaged my attention, obscure flower paintings, botanical illustrations, not however as an art historian but as an image maker seeking ideas, correspondences.
The tulip journey then was ultimately a visual journey. An investigation and discovery of visual possibilities. The tulip became an object of attention, of fascination, became both text and pretext for an activity of picture making. The photographs are not finally, or not primarily, about tulips, they contain tulips.
To say this is not to diminish the role of the tulip. Had the vase of flowers on the table when i made the first tentative exposures exploring the space of my kitchen table been, lets say, daffodils, then the journey, if it had ever begun, would i am sure have been shorter. The daffodil, delightful though it is, exhibits a stubborn rigidity of form, lives and dies at attention. The tulip however is a flower of constant metamorphosis, stretches towards the light, gestures to occupy the space.
I spent much time just contemplating the flowers. The camera far from my thoughts. Delighting in the tulips' voluptuous presence. Such periods of contemplation, of visual pleasure, are always a part of my work process. A deepening of my experience of, my relationship to, my subject.
One cannot photograph experience, but to have lived it can change and develop habitual ways of seeing, of knowing.
To return to picture making - when i made the first simple photographs of a vase of tulips on my kitchen table i could not have made, could not have imagined the later series, the variety of images that i would finally make. They became possible only through the extended visual enquiry that i allowed myself.The activity of picture making also made it necessary to extend my use of the photographic process as i imagined different photographs, different print tonalities, and had to discover the means to realise them.
Someone asked me recently how i knew when a piece of work was finished. I know it when the making of a photograph is no longer necessary, the moment of recognition, the acknowledgement of subject occurs, but to look is sufficient. This has not so far happened with tulips, i still delight in their presence, still occasionally photograph them. 'Tulipa - Petals 2005' was made eleven years after the publication of 'The Stilled Gaze' officially ended my tulip journey.
