A Sudden Flash of Alchemy: The First Experiments...

The last six months of my six years living in CornwallI were spent documenting the place I have come to call home. This work was produced with a large format field camera, creating black and white paper negatives with Ilford Positive Paper. The photographs exist only as one copy on photographic paper. The subject matter, the process and the final result is inherently precious.

This is a different approach to photography when compared to my usual work, but I have enjoyed revisiting the slow, methodical process of using a large format field camera as well as using a new, but traditional process. The subjects are approached with discipline (even more so considering the nature of the materials I am using, which require long exposures that often create quite a surreal image) and not in the usual fleeting way that I am accustomed to.

(I should mention that a few of these images were taken with a Toya and pinhole board, which I fashioned out of an old paper box- hence the dramatic skys...)

The photographs focus on the landscape, people and trades of Cornwall. Three things that can portray the most about a place. It is, however, not just the place that I wanted to document. Cornwall was home for my entire adult life and the photographs exist and act as a way of preserving the memory of my life there.