DUNCAN BOURNE

These images are from the last ten years or so and reflect my interest in places. I try and convey something of the feel of the place in the photograph, and I try and find subjects (places) that feel like the images I've found I want to produce. Foremost among many influences I must acknowledge the work of John Pfahl for his fantastic work with planes and Bernd and Hilla Becher for their incredible blast furnaces and water towers. Walker Evans' work is sheer lyrical genius.

I like to think there are some threads that run through my images, aspects that trigger a response for me at least, and I hope for other viewers.

These photographs are of and about places. I am concerned with space and it's representation in two dimensions, I like to set the planes within my images like stage sets, relying on this to define the space within the image. Having thus defined the space with the broad structure of the image the finer details of light, surface and subject build up the sense of place

For me the images have a sense of calm, of stillness that sits comfortably within the frozen moment of the photograph. I feel drawn to the subjects themselves in part by this feeling of calm or stasis and I work to convey it in the finished images. The calmness reminds me of moments of silence in life, pauses in conversation, the moment after a loud noise, the silence after a telling question or monumental social blunder.

This stillness in the subject is reflected in the images by other considerations too; The viewpoint is a simple one, there is no sense of manipulation or artifice and the subject is undisguised , returning the viewer's gaze unabashedly. Compositions too are simple, frequently central. The frame is always square. The subject sits within the image squarely, at eye level, firmly anchored and open to observation in the same way that the image sits before the viewer on gallery wall or monitor.

My images are often of subjects abandoned, empty or discarded. They are images of unrealised potential, of waste and ruin. The places I photograph are always accidental, formed by carelessness or apathy and subsequently ignored.

I like to think I provide a view of these subjects that might not otherwise be seen, dragging some unwilling aesthetic out of them.

Many of the structures around us are monuments to a brutally stupid economy, temples of grim functionality that brook no idea of cohabitation. These things are constructed to perform their primary function of being a caryard or petrol station with no concern for their lumpish ugliness or the scraps of space left amongst them in which we're expected to live our lives and find comfort. Duncan Bourne,

October 2002