Over the course of the last four years we set out to define ourselves as photographers, image makers or visual artists. Yet in certainty we can only say that we are photographers and as such we are defined by our use of the camera. It is with this position in mind that perhaps i can communicate something of my understanding of what it is to study photography and in my case to be a photographer who values ideas over execution. I began over five years ago now, pursuing a notion of what it was going to be to be a photographer. In the pursuit of this idea, I have been lead through many regions of understanding as to what it is to be a photographer, be it commercial, land art, reclaimed photographic imagery or any other use of the photographic medium. And I stand now looking back to these beginnings and i can say just this. 'So far i have come, but I still haven’t left.'
The beginning of understanding is rooted in our ability to refuse. With photography there is no margin of refusal, no space to breath. What I am getting to here is that as a photographer I learn to make photographs, and as such I am a photographer. Yet to go beyond this means a certain level of foresight to see the folly of representation. The inability to distinguish between many truths is human; the ability to fix a truth is photography. With this explanation of my position as a photographer, Maybe now we can go on to understand why the images I create are no more final or finished than the maker of them.
