 |
||||
|
"I took up photography seriously as a teenager, but the real epiphany for me as an artist photographer came when I was 21. I realised I had been born synchronised with the dawning of a new medium - the first in centuries. I can still remember exactly where I was standing when this revelation flashed across my mind. I had taken a global overview of photography and could not see anything I could honestly call art. There were fine photographers, sure, but not artists. Even worse, the world and his wife seemed to agree with this analysis. And yet the power of Photography and it's unrecognised potential were both glaringly obvious to me. I went into this incredible work fit, working 70 hours a week for five years, casting all other concerns to the wind. Socialising went out of the window, playing guitar went out of the window..... everything! The only time I took off was to see my girlfriend. Everyone thought I had gone mad. I was totally broke but I just didn't care. It was just the sheer exhilaration of being at the cutting edge of things. Photography was a new medium and it took a century and a half to technologically evolve. Had I been born a decade earlier, I could not and would not, have done what I did. Never in my wildest dreams, could I have imagined that decades later I would get the opportunity to be at the cutting edge of a second art revolution. In the early Nineties, whilst everyone debated the merits of digital imaging, I just got on with it. Here was an Art even more powerful than Photography and yet still they coughed and spluttered their crass objections. I had heard all the same obtuse arguments years before, about photography. So I was perhaps, better equipped than most, to deal with them." JAMES ELLIOTT |
||||