When Process Matters - and When It Doesn’t

A page from the 1977 publication ‘Le costa del Mediterraneo’ being held up to light

For some ‘process’ is everything, for others it is irrelevant. For me it’s both.

Process is everything when I create a Held Up To Light image; the initial revelation, photographic capture, colour reproduction and paper stock selection. Philosophically too, the process is the art; the concept, the artistic gesture, the ‘soul’ - how it came into being.

Equally, when I view the resultant images, I’m only interested in their appearance. The creation process has now disappeared and what remains is the trace, the gift, the marvel. It is now what it became, not how or by whom.

These complex, composite images are more than I could conceive or contrive. They are not imagined by me but rather appear to me as if in a dream, unbound by my own knowing intentions.

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between are the doors of perception” - (often paraphrased from William Blake’s ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ c 1790-93)