It’s a question of style..

I can believe this is the second blog of 22, wow this year is really kicking on, I thought as I did a general opening blog that I would talk specifics this week and wanted to talk about a discovery made whilst looking an image for the previous blog.

It started when I was looking for an image that could illustrate my New Year post, obviously I laid down a few criteria, had to be from this year and had to be suitably recognisable as a NathanPhoto Image.

That’s what got me thinking, what makes a NathanPhoto photograph then?

It’s a question of style isn’t it?*

I realise that in recent times my style has changed quite considerably, I started to notice this during my MA and when developing my research practice (which you can find on other channels.) then while thinking about it I started to think what’s my “style”?

Keeping that idea in my mind it was underlined just recently a few of these stylistic image makers have popped up on my radar, thinking of photographers Nadav Kander, Paolo Roversi and moving image maker Wes Anderson. Don’t they have incredibly identifiable imagery that you can almost instantly spot from a mile away. Although in this case I’m thinking editorially/commercially which I would say is a lot more difficult to identify a style never mind carry one off from job to job. 

I’ve never really considered that I’ve had a house style with easily identifiable signifiers and characteristics. Although in contradiction to that I do feel that I have taken coherent images that hang together and as I’m exploring this, I am reminded that people have spotted my images and knew they were mine even with no captions, so there must be something identifiable in my work. 

I guess this no style/style approach was somewhat shaped by my working life as I took a lot of pointers from editors, designers and commissioners as to what image they would like for the purpose they had in mind. I would still produce an image I liked but most of my published work was shaped by others, as it should be, I think. Reflecting on when I was starting out, the prevalent idea for most of the work I was doing was not to have a repetitive style that could become bland or boring. Which was a difficult objective to achieve while balancing making interesting images.

To help with this (and cleverly to link in with my mind map from the previous blog). 

I decide to link an image from the archive with an image taken now so as to observe and discuss my style: but the archive quandaries pop up again.

I started with a strict parameter that the date the image had to be taken on was the 10th of January, didn’t matter what year, I just wanted to present a parameter of the date to see if an image taken on that date linked with one taken years later would throw up some style opinions or links.

As I can never be sure when a film image was taken with my notes etc and no cast iron guarantees of a date I reached back into the digital archive, I started digital in 2001 backing up my work to CDs, hard drive archiving started in 2009 and as they are the most easily accessible in terms of searching, I went with that. So far so good yet the way the PC/Mac searches go that’s not quite as easy as it sounds. 

The accessed, created and modified dates all seem to be mixed in, with some dates preceding others so it’s not a quick process and requires investigation. 

I did however find a few images and to diverge form the subject matter on here, this is one of the interesting things about archives they throw up memories that wouldn’t have otherwise been remembered. It appears that on January the 10th 2009 I was in Liverpool photographing fireworks and I have absolutely no recollection of this at all. The picture has brought back no memories, I’ve checked the metadata and it’s my camera (and possibly a shooting style too) I have all the raw’s as well as the final selected images, so it really looks like I was there. A quick google search doesn’t throw up too much apart from the company I think I was working for and that there a lot of very similar images taken form similar vantage points.

An image of fireworks exploding above a cityscape at night.

Another archive funny is that I always felt that January is such a difficult month as it felt like years ago everything shut down but it appears not !

Maybe I’ve not veered too far from this discussion after all as the images are recognisable to me as I look at them, can see a few mistakes here and there that I was prone to make at that time but overall, I think this image sums up what I was saying about the achievement was to have no style, therefore a style would present itself. Reminds me of a quote by the great Bruce Lee, here for the quote:

“When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.”

It really is a question of style isn’t it !

and timing and fashions and champions and luck and gatekeepers..etc. etc.

Thank you for reading and any comments, thoughts or ideas then. Please get me through the usual channels.

*But what makes up style tho? Technique, outlook, position, etc

Maybe that’s another blog?