Henry

I am interested in the relationship people have with their surroundings. I work with photography so my work consists of images depicting people in different types of situations that have been created by them or that I have placed them in. My work uses different types of formalisation, making the subjects or myself ‘uncomfortable’ in the given surrounding. I aim to depict different aesthetic dynamics through a formalised approach. Rather than ‘capturing the moment’ to depict relationships, I ‘set-up’ the image in an attempt to give a more subjective and, in my opinion, more ‘true’ depiction of these dynamics. I am heavily influenced by artists from the Dusseldorf School of Photography and also people such as Thomas Demmand, Thomas Joshua Cooper and Darren Almond.

Unrelated House Mates: In this project I go to peoples houses that live together but are not related, an anti-family portrait. By placing the housemates in a formal and classical portrait situation while in their own environment I aim to show their relationship to each other and their homes. They are asked to sit very still and in a rigid pose, an unusual thing to have to do in ones own living space.

Romantic Landscapes: I am a big fan of romantic paintings, partly because of the aesthetic of these images but also because I am interested in the idea of humans ‘connecting’ to nature. The idea of the ‘natural’ and the ‘countryside’ is something that I think has become confused. The idea of people escaping to nature is actually a falsity as we are the one who set the boundaries of city and nature in the first place. I use ‘unnatural’ photographic techniques while in ‘natural’ settings. My pictures are in a sense things that we can never see with the naked eye, in the same way that we can very really escape human influence when we strive to connect with nature.

Cityscapes: I think there is just as much beauty in man made landscapes as in natural forms, in fact I’m not sure how much I trust the difference in these distinctions. I have asked people to take photographs of their day-to-day lives that I then edit, forming a collaborative depiction of the world the subject inhabits. I also take architectural shots of estates that would normally be considered mundane or even ugly but in my opinion demand the same aesthetic consideration as any other view.