This series of images are of discarded objects collected randomly, removed from their environment, placed within a studio setting and photographed. In doing so the objects status has effectively been changed. As such the viewer is asked to pause, be it for the briefest of moments, and reconsider their status. Are they still merely rubbish, a mundane and insignificant entity, something tossed to one side once inhabiting the roadside or verge or does the very act of removing and photographing elevate them? Do they become statuesque, a thing of beauty or desire? Do they change our perception of the everyday?

Andy Warhol in his Soup Can Series famously employed the mundane, the everyday as a subject for art, whilst photographers like Irving Penn are noted for such splendid images of cigarette butts, discarded packets and similar rubbish. It is not my intention to copy their approach but rather draw inspiration from their vision. At the same time I have strived to amalgamate conceptual art with historical photographic practices, a juxtaposition that Dr Mike Ware argues in his essay ‘In Defence of Alternative Processes’ strips them of sentimentalism and makes them a valid photographic medium.

These images have been shot on a large format camera using 10” x 8” film with the resulting negatives being contact printed employing a photographic process that dates back to 1835. It is in fact one of the first photographic processes and was employed by William Henry Fox Talbot to render a positive image from his Calotype paper negative. 

Each salt print is hand crafted, using raw chemicals to form a light sensitive solution brushed onto high quality water colour paper (hench the brush strokes around the edge of the print), exposed using sunlight or other UV source, gold toned, fixed and washed to ensure archival longevity. Prints are mounted on acid free museum or conservation board and come complete with an acid free over mount.

Due to the labour intensive nature of this process editions are limited to no more than 10 prints. Final framed print outside dimensions are 810mm x 700mm and are wall mountable using mirror plates.