stay awake till 4.30am (trying to write) expecting to be alert the following day..

This is the work of Jeffrey Robb, a graduate of the RCA. In the description of the work the emphasis is on it’s beauty. I find both the emphasis and the manifestation a little bland. However, this artist seems to be doing well, or I hope he is. The work is flawless and yes it is very nice to look at. But it is too nice for me. There is so much potential to do something with a black background, which I don’t thing the artist really fully made use of (for this public body of work, he likely has other ideas, too).

What differentiates his work from mine is I think: intention. Jeff follows a lineage of photographing (predominately) female nudes of the most beautiful kind. If I had the equipment I would like to develop my project and photograph nudes of the not-generally-classified-as-beautiful type. I would like to work as Peter Greenaway did, as the Dutch tulip painters and the italian and spanish saint painters did. I’d like to evoke something of the Raft of the Medusa without it being more than a reference, without too much easy beauty.

What would I need? A camera, a good camera, I could work with a Canon 4D Mark I  but of course the real with is for the Mark II and a traditional large format, too. But for now digital would be fine. I could work with this. And a studio flashlight. That’s it. That’s all I’d need to begin. THEN I have the problem of not having a calibrate-able screen to colour correct work on and a basic printing budget would need to be found, even if just for test strips and a small 1/4 scale edition to get started. All in all the funds required are: £ several times a fortune.

I am not sure I can work with the Nikon D70s that I have. It regularly creates stripes of severe colour distortion across the image files and at other times with no warning deletes work. puff, gone. HALT of course I can try and find out if it is possible to hook up the camera straight to the laptop. THAT may work. I did this in Ivan Coleman’s photostudio at Goldsmiths university. What a blessing to have had access to that space and Ivan’s knowledge.

More texture is what’s needed.