Quoted By:
>Do you think that was a way of going against what contemporary photography was doing at the time?
SG: In a way it was. With photography you’re often trying to describe the times we live in with such high clarity. I suppose I didn’t try to describe so much as try to have the subject creep through. A lot of those works were the first time I’d actually tried making photographic responses to the times we live in as opposed to photographic descriptions. I really think that was the big shift for me. My earlier works like the billboard series and these sort of comparative studies were very descriptive and detached, and the new work was more of a really strong reaction to the times we lived in, but didn’t necessarily pinpoint one thing. For instance, with the Coming Up For Air series, the pictures were actually made in Japan but I would say that that is absolutely not a body of work about Japan. If anything it’s a response to my life in London at that time and more of a reaction to the chaos and muting feeling of being in London, kind of like when you swim and your head is under the water.
"The Heron"
