Simon Williams

What started off as an experiment; “Can I make a photograph with this 100-year old camera?” has become a passion for creating hand-crafted pictures that are more about the sense of the subject or place, than their literal representation. The discovery of the work of early photographers, their techniques and aesthetics has encouraged me to develop not only my skills but my “eye”. Each new (to me) antique camera, film format and historical printing technology prompts me to look at subjects and scenes with a different eye; one that exploits the uniqueness of each of those.

Pristinely clear images from our modern cameras and phones can be scanned, appraised, re-tweeted or ignored and then forgotten. But an image that draws you to explore, think, imagine, can create and deposit something of value in us, that will last.
To re-work the words of Edgar Degas;
A photograph requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy, some ambiguity.

Even at its best, life isn’t always perfect and photographs that are manipulated to say otherwise are dishonest. I like to keep, in my images, the honesty of the imperfect old camera lenses, the light leaks in the old bellows and the marks from the hand-made processing. This honesty adds to the quality of the images that give me most pleasure.

Antique cameras and historical processes my tools to achieve this.