JAN HARDISTY goldmark 2013
JAN HARDISTY
ORIGINS I was fascinated by photography from an early age. I studied the book of the great post war exhibition ‘The Family of Man’ over and over again as a ten year old and realised what a powerful force photography was. Later I became less interested in photojournalism and more drawn to photography which was concerned with artists’ inner worlds, worlds expressed through everyday items and inanimate objects depicted in a way that transcended their ordinariness and lent them an intensity and emotional power of their own.
When I began working I was particularly influenced in spirit, if not in style, by the great Czech photographer Josef Sudek and by artists such as Morandi, Braque and Ben Nicholson. Before I concentrated full-time on photography I worked in the theatre as a lighting designer, and although my work is almost exclusively lit naturally I try to control the light in my scenes with great precision. Through theatre I have gained an awareness of the power of illusion: of make believe.
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WORKING PROCESS I don’t see myself as a photographer but as someone who uses the camera to record his compositions. I have my camera and then beyond that anything is possible through imagination. I have no plan in my head as I set out to make a picture. I follow my instincts and see where they take me. As Frederico Fellini was quoted when asked about his work, ‘Don’t tell me what I’m doing, I don’t want to know.’ A large part of my working process is physical: the shapes I cut with scissors, the painting of familiar household objects to alter their usual associations – the whole business is about looking, looking and looking again – removing things, replacing
them and more often than not going off at a tangent which changes the picture and the original idea completely. I continue to play until my senses and intuition start to confirm that something is going on beyond my control, and a picture will emerge. In order to replicate the single eye view point of the large format camera I use for a lot of the work, I compose looking through a rectangular hole in a card; moving objects one inch in any direction dramatically affects the composition and the relationship between each piece. This is a very slow and concentrated way of working, quite unlike the general expectations for photography.
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WHITE SPOON Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 51 x 46.5 cm
ÂŁ650
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2
PEAR AND WAVY LINES Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 44 x 54.5 cm
ÂŁ650
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IRON CURLS Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 45 x 45 cm
ÂŁ650
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CARDBOARD THEATRE Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 100, signed, 56 x 58.5 cm
£750 also available in a smaller size ed 75, signed, 39.5 x 41 cm, £375
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LOOKING FOR MORANDI Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 42 x 45 cm
ÂŁ650
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SHADOWPLAY Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 49 x 56 cm
ÂŁ750 also available in a smaller size ed 75, signed, 35 x 40 cm, ÂŁ375
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SCREEN Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 35 x 51 cm
ÂŁ650
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DOUBLE IMAGE Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 33 x 55.5 cm
ÂŁ550
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DOOR Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 49 x 41 cm
ÂŁ650
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HOUSE AND GARDEN Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 31 x 40.5 cm
ÂŁ550
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HANGING BY A THREAD String Works Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 50 x 48.5 cm
ÂŁ750
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RECTANGLE Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 37 x 56 cm
ÂŁ650 also available in a smaller size ed 75, signed, 27 x 40 cm, ÂŁ375
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TOPIARY Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 26.5 x 40 cm
ÂŁ550
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SEQUENCE Folded Paper Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 45 x 46 cm
ÂŁ650 also available in a smaller size ed 75, signed, 34 x 35 cm, ÂŁ375
THE SERIES BUILDING BLOCKS
STRING WORKS
Using wooden bricks to stand in for objects, together with recognisable forms such as decanters and bottles, I created a series of staged still lifes in which real objects and abstract forms share the same dramatic space as if actors on a stage.
I wanted to take some pictures influenced by my theatrical experience, so I made a box set with a series of bars from which I could suspend cut out shapes with cotton thread.
They are the theatre sets; I play with the notions of scale.
FOLDED PAPER I was intrigued by the notion that a single sheet of folded paper could be used in an endless variety of ways to create images that suggested subject matter ranging from the abstract to the architectural. I made a series of pictures using drawing paper that I had worked on with charcoal. This gave the paper a texture and an apparent weight and solidity.
I am also interested in blurring the boundaries between photographic representation and a freer, more abstract type of picture. The inherent difficulty with photography is that the camera records what is seen as real. I wanted to explore ways of using the medium in more abstract ways without resorting to digital trickery. What intrigued me was how I could break up the surface of the image, how I could disrupt the normal perception of three dimensions within a photograph. Hanging two dimensional shapes in front of the objects in the picture created flatness but also depth. This suggested an alternative layer of understanding on the depicted physical world.
It seemed important to me that the scenes should all be created with the paper being folded only once. This discipline employs the minimum alteration possible to a 2D piece of paper to create the illusion of three dimensions within the photograph.
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BALANCING ACT Building Blocks Series digital inkjet print, 2012, ed 45, signed, 31 x 40.5 cm
ÂŁ550
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