A Universe Made of Stories
The Motivation for All Art
Applecross Estate, Scotland. 2013
Why Bother with Photography Today?
Viewfinder, Wester Ross. 2014
Over the past two decades I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the globe working for newspapers, magazines and NGOs. More recently, I’ve been focusing on producing my own photobooks and exhibiting work in museums and galleries. There is no doubt that being able to make a living from photography is an incredible privilege full of exciting and varied challenges.
Yet often I wonder, why bother? In the time you have been reading this, more photographs have been taken around the world than in the entirety of the 19th century. That’s staggering. A lifetime’s work is just a drop in the vast digital ocean of images we swim in daily. I often think of Dutch artist Eric Kessels’ 24 Hrs in Photos, an installation consisting of photo prints of 350,000 uploads to social media. The resulting mountain of paper and ink lingers in my mind, and when I’m out with my camera, I wonder if I am simply adding to that already overwhelming pile of images.
But thankfully these dark thoughts don’t stay for long, and clearly there are reasons I’ve kept going for the past 20 years, from the thrill of a front-page shot and far-flung expeditions to a portrait subject who opens my mind to new ideas. Not to mention the simple joy of being able to pay my bills.Â
Photographs expand our perception of time itself, lifting us out of the present moment to relive the past in rich ways as we look and remember. Perhaps this is why my childhood days seem to stretch on forever, because I returned to them year after year as IÂ leafed through family albums.
Likewise, the most meaningful moments as a photographer, for me, appear in my mind’s eye bathed in a kind of timeless golden light. I’m standing in a landscape with my cameras around my neck, not thinking about them, though – just looking and observing and being. Under Arctic cliffs, as the sun sets on a week-long, Greenlandic soccer tournament, then walking back to town with the players for some reindeer stew. Or climbing, led by armed guards, through protected canopies in Kasanka National Park to witness a sunrise through the wings of eight million fruit bats returning home to roost. Or, stressed and exhausted, lifting my phone to mark the moment my preemie twins are reunited after being in intensive care. Rather than ‘capturing’ these moments, photography has liberated them for all time.
Yet because photography is so universal and ubiquitous these days, I can easily forget that magic. It helps me to see the sheer volume of photographs being made as testament not only to our universe's vast capacity for stories, but also to our unbounded curiosity of what it is that makes life.
So what keeps me going as a photographer? It’s my conviction that photography allows us to travel out beyond ourselves and across time. Our phones may cause us to bend forward and curl in on ourselves, but the camera has the power to take us outward and upward, into life. A photograph can urge us to observe anew and rejoice in the small details we might overlook, or it can lift us beyond our own day-to-day into someone else’s reality. Our lives pass as a flash of light in eternity, yet a single beloved print, held and treasured, can preserve the most fleeting of moments and imbue them with infinite worth.
Twins, Largo. 2017.
Beneficial Distractions
Andrew McConnell’s first photobook Some Worlds Have Two Suns will be published this October by GOST books. His work is consistently brilliant and, having watched this body of work grow and looked over the drafts, I know it will be a cracker.
Allan MacDonald’s Touching Distance paintings are on show at Browns Gallery in Inverness and evoke a feeling of longing for the northern skies.
Alistair Gordon has two shows currently in London and Stornaway. Like Allan, he paints in the environment but then finishes these great vistas in the studio with trompe l’oeil realism. One of his paper-airplane paintings, a favourite image, sits in my living room. Lost On the Machair ends 6 July.
Not everyone I admire has a name starting with A and a very Scottish surname; it just so happens this month that these three artists reflect my longing to be outside under bright skies.
Muirburn, Scottish Borders. 2021
Book of the month
The Scottish Clearances by T.M.Devine
Scotland is defined by the displacement of people off the land. The Highland Clearances are etched into visual and musical memory but the Lowland Clearances occurred first and were larger in scale. Until this century almost nothing was known of their significance. Devine’s historical tour-de-force digs into the details of the Clearances but never loses sight of the movement of ideas from south to north, lowlands to highlands. A unifying narrative of a nation changed beyond belief in two centuries. The popular imagination has yet to catch up. This book and its ideas have been foundational to my Fabricated Land work.
Thanks for reading! I would love to hear from you with questions or feedback.
Kieran
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