John Lowings |
From: 8th November 2023
Until: 10th January 2023 |
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I've been shooting pictures since I got my first camera - a Kodak Brownie 127 - at age 11, for my birthday. Sometimes photography has been central to my life, and at others more peripheral, but always there, an outlet, giving a sense of meaning and continuity, as is the case with the practice of all art.
The more central periods include a degree in photography at the LCP, (London College of Printing), from 1981 to 1984, and a spell of a few years, as a professional, 'jobbing' photographer, doing a variety of work including advertising, PR and editorial, in colour and black-and-white. I also produced a substantial body of landscape work, shot in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, as illustrations for a book of folk tales, (chosen by myself), and published by Henry Holt, in New York, in 2000. That work yielded a Fellowship of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in North Mayo, several exhibitions, including at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, and a trip to the San Francisco Opera house where several pictures were used as enormous back-projections for the world premiere of a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon.
My preference has been, in the past, for black-and-white work, partly because it can be more expressive of atmosphere and mood, but also because, in the days of film, the processes for making individual colour prints were, to my mind, unsatisfactory. They were extremely cumbersome, and yielded prints that I couldn't like. All that changed with digital. Print quality now can be phenomenally high. These prints are made by PhotoBox, an online company and are on aluminium.
For me, another plus for digital photography is that it allows me to do things that are simply not possible with film. For example, two of the pictures in this series are made by moving the camera during the exposure. With digital it's possible to check each image, in the camera, as it's made, allowing me to adjust the way I'm moving it and arrive at a satisfactory result. In film that process would produce random results as each image could not be checked when the exposure was made, so blind luck would be required to get a decent image. I can also transform the images in Photoshop to produce colours and effects that can only be made with digital. For me, the process is very freeing.
Most of these pictures are barely photographs any more. I think of them as graphic art.
Thank you for taking the time to look at them. All were made in France, in the Haute Vienne, where I lived for nearly ten years until very recently. I did them for a show in my local town, Oradour-sur-Vayres.
Contact details:
Click here to contact John via email.
The more central periods include a degree in photography at the LCP, (London College of Printing), from 1981 to 1984, and a spell of a few years, as a professional, 'jobbing' photographer, doing a variety of work including advertising, PR and editorial, in colour and black-and-white. I also produced a substantial body of landscape work, shot in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, as illustrations for a book of folk tales, (chosen by myself), and published by Henry Holt, in New York, in 2000. That work yielded a Fellowship of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in North Mayo, several exhibitions, including at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, and a trip to the San Francisco Opera house where several pictures were used as enormous back-projections for the world premiere of a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon.
My preference has been, in the past, for black-and-white work, partly because it can be more expressive of atmosphere and mood, but also because, in the days of film, the processes for making individual colour prints were, to my mind, unsatisfactory. They were extremely cumbersome, and yielded prints that I couldn't like. All that changed with digital. Print quality now can be phenomenally high. These prints are made by PhotoBox, an online company and are on aluminium.
For me, another plus for digital photography is that it allows me to do things that are simply not possible with film. For example, two of the pictures in this series are made by moving the camera during the exposure. With digital it's possible to check each image, in the camera, as it's made, allowing me to adjust the way I'm moving it and arrive at a satisfactory result. In film that process would produce random results as each image could not be checked when the exposure was made, so blind luck would be required to get a decent image. I can also transform the images in Photoshop to produce colours and effects that can only be made with digital. For me, the process is very freeing.
Most of these pictures are barely photographs any more. I think of them as graphic art.
Thank you for taking the time to look at them. All were made in France, in the Haute Vienne, where I lived for nearly ten years until very recently. I did them for a show in my local town, Oradour-sur-Vayres.
Contact details:
Click here to contact John via email.
Come and see John’s work at Studio 3 Gallery.
