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Steven Spencer

Born

1975, Bedford, England

Type of Artwork

Fine Art Photography
Prepared to undertake commissions.

Art Education

National Diploma in Photography, Barnfield College, Luton, Beds
Higher National Diploma in Photography, Stoke-on-Trent College, Staffs
BA (Hons.) Fine Art/ Photography, London Guildhall University

Purpose and Concerns

With this body of work (Memories from the Sky and Memories from the Sea) I am looking into deconstructing the conventions of the landscape photograph. The idea of landscape is not so much a quality of nature as a cultural convention indicating how we relate ourselves to nature and to the physical world.

The landscape photograph is both a composition and a subject. It is usually an image of land and sky organised by a horizon line and by foreground, middle ground and distance. The subject matter is nature, space, location and other organic and inorganic elements of the physical world as well as our desires and personal associations. The photograph is neither a history nor a guidebook and cannot tell us of all the human facts behind it; yet it can suggest a deep use or a hidden human past behind its surface composition.

These images are of the Sea and the Sky but are too mutable and ubiquitous to give tangible information of time and location. The text, however, provides a locale and language for the open colour fields. This text is a personal record of travels, experiences and observations. The images are left mainly as a blankness, or meditation room; a window of sorts intended to invite the viewer into contemplation of the sublime, the void and the visual experience.

The text/titles can be seen as instructions of location, personal history and memory, asking the viewer to visualise something that isn't visible. These are documents of my presence in places, observations left for memory as the camera makes its slow exposure. The camera records what I see, and I feel that this is as personal as a belief or an opinion. A diary of sorts is contained in the text/titles. However, this is not confessional, giving facts about an act or location, stories and experiences that have been inscribed upon memory.

With these photographs, I am looking skyward and seaward to excavate the memories of the mind which are subject to time and location.

We all try to place ourselves in relation to the layers of history and culture across the land. Collectively, however, the sea and the sky put us in our place.

Colour Photographs
Black and White Photographs

Design