Flickr: kandlephotography

I wouldn't, strictly speaking, call myself a photographer. For me it's all about images and imagery and 'the story'. I am passionate about photography and spend a great deal of time learning about my camera and using it, but then I spend even more time manipulating images for results which please me. Probably like every photographer I am always looking for that magical moment and the ecstatic feelings that accompany such moments.

As far back as I can remember imagery and, indeed, life, has always been about the story. Much of my internal angst has been about how we each make up our own life story, which I have no problem with. It is only when that story is accompanied with an insistence of its absolute reality that I get bothered.

It is beautiful to share our stories but the basest despotism when we insist on the absolute veracity of our own, singular, story at the expense of others.

My religious past has much to answer for, not least my love of a good story, photography, and the passion that accompanies everything I do in life.

I may have been born a creative person, but whatever creativity I have is defused, perhaps displaced, anger. Being creative, for me, contains, violent, virulent anger and passion.

If I have compassion, I realise it in being passionate. I hope in that way that I may never become a despot, though I have had my despotic moments.

King Bladud's Pigs

These pieces of art are currently appearing all over Bath to celebrate roughly 3000 years of the legend of King Bladud. My interest grew slowly as I encountered one pig, then another. I am now hooked. I hope to get shots of all the pigs and to present them in an artistic way.

My congratulations to the artists who have done some amazing work. My only regret is that I didn't get to do one. Still, I have the pleasure of travelling around and photographing them and learning a lot about Bath into the bargain.

About Glamour work

I had a conversation recently with someone who works at Bath university doing film studies. She asked me if I felt I was drawing out some essential qualities of the models in the glamour shots. I have to say that, no, I don't think I am doing that at all. I am imposing my own ideas on the pictures, building on what is essentially there, but taking it somewhere else. My great inspiration is Marilyn Monroe, she became an iconic legend which was quite unrelated to her as a person and, in fact, it later emerged she was a very troubled person. It is debatable whether iconic beauty is a problem in society or whether it only becomes a problem when there is a huge corporate machine driving those real human beings. There is a tension in beauty, it does have a socially excluding aspect as any beautiful woman will tell you. I am aware of that tension, and that it is part of my own feelings and inspiration in creating the pictures I do.

It was an aspect of womanhood that feminism fought and rejected. I think they were wrong, that's like a form of censorship that fails to address the issues. It a subject of ongoing discussion here as the women I work with have all experienced very real hostility, and occasional violence, chiefly from women, in social situations.

Having said all that, perhaps I am drawing out something rather than imposing, I am not sure.