Domestic Nudes - Tryste

Domestic Nudes - Stephanie

Domestic Nudes - Myself

Close-up Camera

Camera Obscura

Panoramic format

Alongside making photographs, this year's work in the studio has centred on camera-making - building cameras from scratch, and also adapting existing cameras. But the point isn't simply to produce working cameras, or cameras as pieces of sculpture, so much as to open up the camera (camera = chamber or room) and the whole process of camera design. By camera design, I mean the design of a camera as a tool to achieve a purpose; so the purpose is a fundamental part of the camera. This is in opposition to the modern notion that a camera is a neutral device, available for whatever application its user chooses. This modern notion goes hand in hand with the camera as a mass-produced commodity, standardised, internationalised, packaged and marketed to a public which is trained to look for 'features' or the 'camera of the year'. This modern notion, it seems to me, stifles photographic image-making as much as it conceals the roots of the camera in the human fascination with the lives of others ... the curiosity which leads to surveillance, voyeurism, and interrogation.

All of that can sound a bit heavy. Fact is, it's also a learning, trial and error kind of process in which there is scope for humour as much as for analysis. The links on the right go to the three main aspects of my current studio work ... the camera obscura, the close-up camera, and the panoramic format; below are a number of the smaller camera pieces I've worked on alongside the bigger pieces.