These pictures are about how things change and they play a part in recording that process. They are about how we throw things away when they become useless to us and they are also about the art of photography.
The stuff we are surrounded by changes gradually over time, almost without us noticing it. The things in our houses are replaced by new things, updated things and things we simply want. Our LPs were replaced by CDs and now our CDs with MP3s. Our razors used to have one razor blade, but that was no way enough. Mine still only has two but the latest model has five. Time to move on. Time to chuck out the old stuff and update with new shiny stuff. Photography has been going through this process over the last decade and photographers everywhere are having to consider how they react to this change. The pace of change has quickened recently and now digital photography has reached critical mass and the scales are well and truly tipped in its favour. The images here represent the relics of what is being left behind. They are now redundant and will soon join razors with only 3 blades in a land fill near you.
This work was originally exhibited within a darkroom in Brighton University. The images copied onto transparencies and projected through the enlargers. This space too will in turn become a relic itself. Darkrooms across the land are being torn out and replaced by media studies labs with PCs in neat lines. Soon the wellspring of the photographers art will pass away like so many other outmoded things before it. To some photographers these images will be a poignant reminder of a vanishing world. To others, that world has already gone and these pictures will serve to prove how useful the change has been. But the fact is that these relics, some of which are shown here, are what photographers have relied on for generations to produce the imagery that surrounds us. For that we owe them something. Some of these artifacts are also quite beautiful in their own way and being the equipment from a visual medium I thought it fitting that they should be recorded in this graphic manner.
With thanks to Cas Short, Sharon at Four Corners, Mike Feary and Brian McClave.
