DAVID CORKE

I began my working life as a photographer in an academic institution — learning all about black-and-white photography in the days of silver-gelatine printing. Mixing chemicals for processing films and prints; darkroom printing and enlarging; copying; and general photography with 5"x4" and 35mm cameras soon became part of everyday work for the next ten years.

I then went on to work in a film-production unit, making documentary films on that organization’s scientific research work throughout Australia. That was all working with pictures, sounds, and words; and meeting interesting people doing exciting work on the fringe of knowledge. Ten years later I moved on to become a free-lance photographer, director and writer of educational films for use in schools. A wide range of subjects were covered — biology, social studies, geography, Australian history, wildlife, art and anthropology.

Now in ‘active retirement', I’ve gone back to my early interests, but with a modern twist—combining analogue and digital photographs with computer editing, to produce gallery-prints from the monochrome and colour photographs I’ve collected in my travels throughout Australia.

As an artist, I don't need to see a whole lot of unnecessary detail in a picture; and as I'm working with images on a computer it's possible to "paint with pixels", and so focus attention on the subject or the composition. I’m amazed by the potential of what might be called ‘photo-impressionism’ or 'PhotoArt' — although many people will always say “that’s not a photograph!” But then, what is a photograph? An American artist/photographer once said: “Photography and painting are the same. Each renders imagination in tangible form … It all comes down to the same thing—the ability to envision a final result in your mind’s eye, and then to make it so with your tools at hand … art is the message, not the medium”. (KenRockwell.com)

To me, it's the message that's important, not the medium.