Paul Biddle
On the threshold of reality:
Some pictures are simple and complete inside my head from the beginning, but most of my images start with the inspiration of the objects. It may be something found in a junk shop, washed up on the beach near where I live or something from my past -wooden letters from a childhood game, my palette from my art school days. I often assemble a collection of things and then have "play-time" to find the right composition, juxtaposition and colours. Colour, of course, is very important. I love saturated colour and often use pure pigment on objects and backgrounds.
Sometimes a meaning will evolve that was not originally intended, but mostly I prefer people to read what they like into the pictures or hopefully just enjoy them for their visual stimulation.
Almost all these images were shot completely in camera, although I am using the computer more and more and am very excited by its limitless possibilities. I am keen to have the same technical excellence in anything computer generated as I hopefully attain with conventional photography.
I have been a professional photographer since 1985. Of course, in this time the main change in the way I work and in the business as a whole has been the use of computers.
In the early days of computer imaging (late '80's, early '90s) many of my pictures were presumed to be computer generated. I suppose this was because of the intense colours and surreal subjects. On one occasion an image was used on the front cover of a computer magazine- I think there was a shortage of the real thing then! In fact, I shot everything ‘in camera’. In '91 I was given the opportunity to produce 2 computer generated images for an exhibition to promote the Mamba (a workstation developed by Crossfield Electronics and backed by Fuji). This was a fascinating experience but I continued to shoot everything ‘in camera’ and have only had my own computer system for 4 years. The enormous difference that this has made to me is that all constraints have gone- I can now put anything together in an image whereas before I was limited by such things as model-making/ set-building and the size of my studio (small). Also before the use of computers, my inspiration often came from objects that I found and played around with, whereas now anything that I can photograph anywhere in the world can be included. This limitlessness can be pretty scary- but very exciting.
So what has been the influence of computers on the industry as a whole? As a result of the blurring of the edges between designer, photographer etc., I feel that there has been a drop in the quality of work produced. With the increased use of royalty free images and the wonders of programmes like Photoshop, anyone can be a designer/ photographer. On the whole, this has resulted in a lot of bland, uninteresting work. Perhaps the photographer is not appreciated as a craftsperson/ artist in the way he once was.
Observing the commercial photography scene here, it has been interesting to see that since the advent of computers playing a big part in the industry, the main trends have been for grainy black and white, 1950's lookalike colour and reportage style photography - often the more amateur and snapshot like, the better! Quite what this means, I'm not sure.
For myself, I hope to move more into the fine art market as I can now reach a worldwide audience and am currently setting up a website for the sale of prints. It's interesting to note that for all the various exhibitions that I've taken part in around the world, it was the Zone Zero website (LINK) that brought me to your attention.
As for the near future, I'm sure that the desire for quality will return as the technology ceases to be a new toy and becomes just another tool of the trade, albeit a major one. Probably the distinctions between all the different players in the field will continue to blur but hopefully this will eventually make for a more efficient industry. Whatever happens, these are challenging and exciting times.
www.paulbiddle.com
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