Andy Lamp, 2006, C-Type Print
At this moment in history photography is going through a massive upheaval, with digital cameras making it possible for people to take a thousand pictures with minimum effort. There is no ceremony to this and the results are instant, and although this is good for documenting an event it takes the character and thought out of the process, you can take a thousand images and end up with one good shot by accident. If by some fluke you don’t even end up with one good shot you can always work some Photoshop magic on a mediocre one.
The digital revolution has knocked down many barriers making once specialist pathways much more accessible to the average Joe, this is reflected in our popular culture through the likes of Myspace and Facebook where it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry who can afford a digital camera is a ‘Photographer’.
Photography has lost its connection to the painted portrait, the craft of photography has been erased and replaced with a new one where the results are instant; the process of hand crafting the image in a darkened room with a red light for your friend has been surpassed by the clicking of a mouse. The grainy results that can only be achieved by using film are slowly dieing as more and more film manufacturers are discontinuing lines; as a result photography is starting to become nothing more than 1 and 0’s in the virtual world. 1 and 0’s that in 50 years time will no doubt be lost forever as new and improved storage devices are introduced and older storage formats are phased out and made redundant.
Thankfully some people still prefer the traditional approach over the newer digital format. Traditional film takes much more work. Extremely skilled photographers can get better results on film if they can complete the many more steps from shot to print all perfectly. Because there are so many ways things can go wrong with making prints from film, especially from print (negative) film. Rob Luckins is one of those people who still favours a traditional approach.
Rob Luckins started taking photographs at the age of five when he was given his first camera, it was small plastic and blue. Although he didn’t begin taking proper pictures until much later in his life. Rob takes his inspiration from films, magazines and music, attempting to create an idealistic view of the world we live in fraught with nostalgia for a time that possibly never existed.
Rob’s Exhibition at the Centre Fold Gallery is called Welcome to the Dark Slide and is a collection of photographic portraits. Rob Luckins is a UK based photographer who likes to take pictures of people mostly but he has also photographed many different cities and the odd band including The Go! Team and Craig David.
It is Rob’s yearning for the past that is often reflected in his photography as well as the equipment he uses. In these Post Modern times Rob still chooses traditional large and medium format cameras and employs hand processed techniques. “I love the ceremony that comes with meeting people and collaborating on an image, when I turn up with an old wood and brass 5x4 inch land camera people are slightly taken aback as most have never seen technology like it, the camera in itself is a work of art and commands a certain respect! I don’t try to glamourise people in my work, all I want to do is make an image that shows them as they are or as they were at one point in their life. These people are all important to me in their own way, some of them I see all the time, some are people I see very rarely, some are people I will probably never see again. The work is what it is, I don’t believe in telling people what to think about it.”
John Franz, 2007, C-Type Print
The portraits on display are of creative individuals showing a mixture of artists and musicians. Each photograph has been hand printed to an edition of two and are completely un-edited.
All images in the exhibition were hand printed by Russell Squires, an extremely competent photographer and hand printer who has perfected his printing skills over many years.
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