Listening With My Eyes

A good photograph should get noticed and speak for itself when we first see it. There may be other layers to the image that need an explanation, as is so often the case in the Fine Art world, but I've never understood why images need to be complicated - or dull. Simplicity above all else in art and in life. Street photography can be more than shapes, shadows, movement, patterns, colours. It can be rich in ideas and humour as Elliot Erwitt has shown his whole career. Life gives constantly and I consider my photos to be gifts presented by Life when I am lucky enough to be looking in the right way. And the right way is when ‘I’ am not really there, I have got out of my own way so to speak. My photographs were reviewed in a magazine in China recently and I managed to get the Cantonese text translated. The reviewer said: “Sometimes it needs you to just enjoy (his work), sometimes it requires your eyes to listen to the jokes it’s telling you.” I can’t put it better than that.