Catching Photographer Tim Booth has a new exhibition opening in May. He talked to Fergus Byrne about images from both sides of the lens.
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few years ago, in an interview about a new body of work that Dorset photographer Tim Booth had just begun working on, he said that photography is not reality. He described it as an ‘interpretation of the truth, or, of what you perceive to be the truth.’ Those that like to debate the subject of photography have long challenged the notion that a photograph is a moment captured in time; it is more an opportunity to allow the photographer and the viewer to create their own narrative. The challenges are creating engagement, empathy and offering a platform for imagination. Next month Tim will launch an exhibition of work on a theme that offers a vast canvas for those that wish to imagine life beyond the subject. Entitled Circus the exhibition will offer a first look at the early stages of a project that Tim hopes might become his next book.
50 The Marshwood Vale Magazine May 2021 Tel. 01308 423031
Although he could have chosen from a number of themes that he has explored in his fine art photography in the past, Tim sees a powerful image of human endeavour and achievement in the direction circus has taken. ‘Circus, in the old days, was a massive extended family with lots of animals’ he explained. ‘It was all very community and now it’s become, in a way, much more disparate. You’ve got individual circus artists who are probably out there on their own, training very hard, and they’ll all come together to do a show—but then they’ll all leave again. They’re not all part of the community. So they are pieces of a puzzle really, rather than one picture.’ There is an irony in the change. ‘Now the humans are training themselves rather than training animals.’ He also believes that the current level of human skill in a circus, compared to forty years ago, is huge. ‘You’d have a strong man and very bendy girl and
