Originally published February 14, 2009
An online session with British photographer Peter Fraser, considered by many to be the photographer who has most absorbed the post-World War II American tradition – found in literature as well as the visual arts – of finding the sublime in unlikely places, left me looking at places I had become over-familiar with, such as the photographers’ office at the newspaper where I work , in a new light. Fraser (http://www.peterfraser.net/), one of the most important British colour photographers, has made incredible photographs of the most mundane things we see around us all the time – he has a fascinating series on dirt, for instance. Admittedly, I started off the session as something of a skeptic. I wasn’t familiar with his work apart from a quick look at his website before the session began. Pretty much the way I’d felt about American photographer William Eggleston (incidentally a huge influence on Fraser) when I first started going round his exhibition at the Barbican a few years ago…. and yet, then as now, the pictures grow on you, and by the end of the viewing, you’re hooked.
The room I was in is in desperate need of remodelling (in all fairness, it’s due to be done pretty soon), but immediately after the lecture was over, I started shooting details in the room I’d never really given much of a second glance before. Maybe I was wasting my time, but perhaps because I found myself in more of a meditative state of mind due to countless reasons I won’t go into here, there was a new found beauty in the grottiness of the room. As the lecture was drawing to a close, I was already taking pictures.
It’s certainly not really photojournalism in the classic sense, but it is a form of documentary photography.
As soon as I get a free hour or so over the next couple of days, I intend to go over to the apartment I’m currently having done up, and continue doing some pictures along these lines.
An online session with British photographer Peter Fraser, considered by many to be the photographer who has most absorbed the post-World War II American tradition – found in literature as well as the visual arts – of finding the sublime in unlikely places, left me looking at places I had become over-familiar with, such as the photographers’ office at the newspaper where I work , in a new light. Fraser (http://www.peterfraser.net/), one of the most important British colour photographers, has made incredible photographs of the most mundane things we see around us all the time – he has a fascinating series on dirt, for instance. Admittedly, I started off the session as something of a skeptic. I wasn’t familiar with his work apart from a quick look at his website before the session began. Pretty much the way I’d felt about American photographer William Eggleston (incidentally a huge influence on Fraser) when I first started going round his exhibition at the Barbican a few years ago…. and yet, then as now, the pictures grow on you, and by the end of the viewing, you’re hooked.
The room I was in is in desperate need of remodelling (in all fairness, it’s due to be done pretty soon), but immediately after the lecture was over, I started shooting details in the room I’d never really given much of a second glance before. Maybe I was wasting my time, but perhaps because I found myself in more of a meditative state of mind due to countless reasons I won’t go into here, there was a new found beauty in the grottiness of the room. As the lecture was drawing to a close, I was already taking pictures.
It’s certainly not really photojournalism in the classic sense, but it is a form of documentary photography.
As soon as I get a free hour or so over the next couple of days, I intend to go over to the apartment I’m currently having done up, and continue doing some pictures along these lines.
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