Les Walkling
"By the 1960’s, around the time I discovered sensitized surfaces and began my love affair with photography, there was already a widening divide between commercial photography and fine art photography...I discovered that I had been born into a world of photography divided against itself. Most of the photographers I knew at that time tended to be obsessed with what was in front of their lens; that decisive moment, the kick that won the grand final, miraculous lighting effects, or nature at its best in a magnificent vista. On the other hand most of the fine artists I hung out with, who also used photography, were more interested in what was taking place on their side of the lens... This divide placed style and beauty on one side, and politics and culture on the other…
By the 1970’s photographic practices were driving our cultural and political interventions... This also cultured an understanding that resisted easy answers, simplistic slogans, and reductive assumptions. We understood we were writing our own history and presenting ourselves with emotional, spiritual and intellectual alternatives…
Art will always transcend life, because it remains essentially unimaginable to contemplate life without art. In the end we make art for what hides in the margins. We make art because we need to and we don’t mind where the revelations come from. We reproduce those things that matter the most to us, even though we may not consciously understand everything that we are doing at the time... It is a commitment to ourselves and the things in this world that matter most to us.
(Les Walkling 2007)
