INTRODUCING JAMES J. GARDINER
I was born and bred in a small village outside of London, it then became a bigger village, and now I live in a different small town where I go to university outside of London. It’s quiet where I live which seems to be a negative thing to most of my friends but not so much to me. I am almost 22. I’ve been taking photographs sporadically most of my life though not seriously or with much thought into what I was doing. My dad has always been a big time amateur photographer, so much so that my earliest memory is being up late at night sitting in his darkroom watching him print. I guess I got seriously into it about 3/4 years ago. I honestly don’t remember what made me start taking photographs however I know that I don’t want to stop! I want to use photography to explore the world and what interests me, more importantly though I want to use it to explore the events and situations that shape the world and bare witness to some of the suffering happening beyond the comforts of the western world. My understanding of my life has changed I would say, especially in what I can achieve and leave behind photographically. I am grateful for this awareness now. I feel photography has made me more focused, driven and appreciative though also more critical about events or situations I do not agree with.. My ‘life’ with photography is still very young so my list of experiences is small however the most recent event that happened due to photography would be spending a short time living on the remotest island in the UK and meeting the couple of dozen people that live there. It was a brilliant experience and one which I hope to repeat, for a longer time, later in the year. My favourite camera seems to change with whatever I’m currently shooting with (although my all time favourite is my 5x4 large format) or which other photographers are exciting me. For example the other week I discovered the work of conflict photographer Alex Majoli who shoots solely on digital point and shoot cameras. You couldn’t get a more different camera from the large, cumbersome, film using large format camera but his work instantly made me respect the digital point and shoot format so much more, not just for the images he made, but the images the cameras allowed him to make. The image above is one I took last summer whilst living with my girlfriend. During my first year of studying photography, before I went to university, she was predominantly my only subject, I took a few hundred photographs of her during that year then left for university. During my first year at university it seemed I rarely photographed her. I guess now looking back at that time it was due to the increased exposure to so many different photographic practices, this coupled with a vastly busier schedule left very little room to photograph her. This image to me shows how I photographically changed and grew during that year. The work of my friend Thom Bridge has always excited me. Especially his Motherland project and the current work he is making with his twin brother Theo. His work is thoughtful and stunning. It has so much more weight and creativity behind it than a lot of work I have been seeing recently.
