It was travel that first opened my eyes to how I could embrace photography as an art form.
During my 20s and 30s, my greatest passion was to get out and see the world. I was a young interior designer with a burning curiosity for architecture. I immersed myself in it. From Gaudi’s iconic buildings in Barcelona and the renaissance glories of Florence, through to the confident modern buildings springing up across the Far East, I travelled the globe to experience striking architecture at first hand.
My travels showed me that photography offered a new way of looking at buildings. I’d studied photography as part of my degree at art college, but when I put travel and architecture together it inspired me to develop a visual language of my own. I found that by focusing in on architectural details I could create landscapes that gave me a radical new way of interpreting buildings and their meaning. A way of opening up fresh perspectives for other people.
As my skill as a photographer grew, I became more interested in the philosophical aspect of the art form. While fascinated by aesthetics, I wanted to explore new methods of uncovering the hidden stories and meaning of buildings. I wanted to experiment with ways of letting architecture tell its own story, rather than try to impose my own meaning on my images.
To begin this journey, I enrolled on an MA course in Photography at Falmouth University. This gave me the opportunity and inspiration to develop both my technical skills and my visual language. I was inspired by innovative architects such as Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind, finding myself searching for ways of capturing the emotional as well as the structural impact of their work. I also drew on the philosophy of Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, as well as the documentary explorations of photographer Zed Nelson.
Today my work is still very much focused on buildings, finding ways of using shape, contrast, layers and juxtaposition to unlock fresh narratives that are inspired by some of the world’s most powerful architecture.
