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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 art medium - the first in centuries. I can still remember exactly where I was standing when this lucid revelation flashed across my mind. I had taken a global overview of photography and knew its history well. I could not see anything I could honestly call great 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 patently obvious to me. I went into this incredible work fit, working 70 hours a week for six 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 pioneering 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 I would, much later, get the opportunity to be at the cutting edge of a second art revolution. I started with computers in the Eighties and by the NIneties had created radical, innovative Art at the highest level. Whilst everyone said "You can't create art with computers, I did exactly that. As with Photography, my masterstroke was in creating new imagery so intensely creative, it would have been foolish to question whether or not it was Art. And no-one ever has. Computer imaging software made possible a new Art form even more powerful than before and yet still the sceptics and cynics coughed and spluttered their crass objections. I had heard all the same obtuse arguments and fatuous remarks years before, about photography. So I was perhaps, better equipped than most, to deal with them." JAMES ELLIOTT
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