Vague by Nigel Maudsley
This series of images were made extensively in camera, through long exposure, hand-held and tripod. Minimally enhanced through software adjustments, the works project an honest reflection of time and space, with no digital interventions in post-production. Each seek to create a light drawing, following points of interest or colour present on location. Works depict iconic places and structures within the city of Brighton, UK, seen through the eyes of those present. Brighton is a city renowned for its open understanding of difference, culturally, socially and sexually, a home for many who feel ‘other’ in more traditional towns in Great Britain.
Vague is reminiscent of other painterly approaches to recording place, the passage of people and bodily motif both in paint and photography. Subliminally influenced by the wonders of Turner’s skies and Lautrec’s dancers, the works imply gesture and ambience. Some in the series are almost bodily, speaking perhaps of Frances Bacon’s papal portraits or Melanie Manchot’s vulnerable portraits.
Occasionally, a work implies a ghostly presence or absence, watching or glimpsed by the lens. Others suggest an almost drug-induced hallucination, reflecting upon the transience of life and of being.
Light and the passage of time become the subject of works, as they draw colour and line across the photographic canvas. Unlike traditional photography that freezes a moment of time, these images seek to represent more than a single moment, a story or journey of the viewer. They allude to a state of mind or consciousness, a way of being and seeing, of living in the present, letting the world wash over and through you.
The photographic intention is to offer an alternative perception of the everyday; one understood through the skin, through experience.
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