Simon Cuthbert
“The purpose that I now seek to instil in my art practice has not always so consciously accompanied my image-making process. The desire to make photographs has, however, always been constant, regardless of my knowledge of the field or of my place in it, as has the desire to present my work as fine art. What becomes apparent when considering the work I have produced over the last twenty years is the continuity of my concerns, and a commitment to the notion that photographs can enact change (or in the least stimulate thinking and generate dialogue). This continuity has, over the greater breadth of my practice, transgressed into a cycle where I am returning to the ideas, the influences and the places that preoccupied my early practice. Photographs are powerful documents where the conscious and subconscious elements of a thing can be aligned to transmit truths beyond that thing's material essence: something only the photographic image can convey.
The images selected here occupy a significant place within my oeuvre, for the recognition they have received or their ability to demonstrate this philosophy. The desire to present a coherent selection of images was made difficult given the diversity of approaches I have incorporated over the period in question. I have increasingly striven to locate my photographic practice within the context of contemporary art where the truths of photography can exist as non-absolutes. That is to say that the meaning we derive from the causal relationship of the photographer’s intention to the resulting photograph may require an analytic approach where the associative properties of the thing represented need more consideration than the literal.”
(Simon Cuthbert 2006)
