Peter Massingham
Photography
In one way or another, photography has been my vocation for over thirty years. The medium still moves and challenges me for both its complexity and apparent simplicity.
My works are not the result of a calculated theme or theory. Rather, the images have evolved from circumstances having their own volition. As far back as the 1890s, the landscape painter Alfred East identified photography’s ability to stop time, to freeze the flow of movement that is life . . . to literally ‘still’ life. In the colour photographs, this ‘stilled’ life transforms the natural world into something that remains wholly believable, yet looks artificial. The formality of the objects – wheelie bins in their contrasting colours, a small fence, and a static magpie – seem part of an orchestrated scene.
Unexpected but fortuitous qualities are exposed. This aspect of photography is for me, one of its primary seductions, as through this process the stage is set for a kind of theatre.
6 Iliffe Yard
Walworth & Kennington
London SE17 3QA
masking1@mac.com