Perhaps it was healthy to burn the genre to the ground, fully reject it. Slowly I am starting to reframe images of models as ‘photographs of people I know’, people I feel I have some connection with. I am going to sack off model photography as a genre but stick with models I know and work well with. I’m not sure how useful the advice is to anybody, but if you’re also trying to break out of a similar rut, learn to dislike, learn to hate, it is called “Passion” and when there is seemingly nothing left to like, maybe you will start to come back to it with a completely different understanding.
It’s been eating away at my soul, the book I read on the Art of Photography, the concept of how should we respond to this? A while ago I saw a post on a photography forum, what peoples dream photoshoot would be. It was predictable, better locations, more whacky concepts, more makeup and props. That £4 book has clicked something in my brain that’s never going back in its box. Perhaps the art of photography has nothing to do with concepts, and everything to do with responding to what is in front of you, your soul resonating with the vision that manifests.
I had an idea; try my damn best to do something creative, try to capture Emma Jayne as I experience her. I feel my lack of humanist qualities would make me the world's lamest social documentary photographer, but I find Emma something curious rather than a 2-dimensional model. She has a unique alternative look, in real life, her movements, mannerisms and nature seem different again. I had this pseudo-possible, maybe, a head in the clouds desire to try and capture how I experience her, what lies between the moments when the camera is ready. I know everybody says that wishy washy shit with portraits, but this time it felt tangible, a fact that only needed capturing.
Newnham was Emma’s old home village, it has a sense of place captured not in poignant landmarks but the subtly of its character. Something seemed fitting, trying to respond to Emma Jayne in the town she grew up.
I feel I was one photographer before this shoot, and another one after this shoot and all the shit to get Salt prints working. That’s all the energy I need to carry on, a sense of progression.
Emma Jayne – Newnham, Waxed Salt Prints.
