Exercise 5.7: Prepare your artist statement

As suggested in the course material, I spent some time looking through artist statements of photographers that I have pressed upon during this Landscape course so far. I haven't really taken much notice of any artist statements before now and so it was interesting to see how they are written and what information they contain.
To summarise, I have made bullet points of my thoughts on each photographer.

First off I looked at the artist statement of Michael Wolf with his 'Life in the City' series.

• third person
• tells all about his personal career and attributes
• very professional tone
• essay-like
• very in-depth and lengthy
• very contextual

Jon Rafman '9-eyes' - saatchi gallery website

• first person
• personal tone
• less formal - more conversational
• not so technical
• specific to the project and what his intentions of the project were
• only a paragraph long
• simple and to the point

Joan Fontcuberta - angels barcelona website

• third person
• discusses technique and style
• focussed on artist, not specific piece of work
• no personal info or attributes

Doug Rickard - 'A New American Picture' - Yossi Milo Gallery website (press release statement)

• third person
• in depth discussion of theme of the collection
• discusses style of photography
• discusses attributes
• personal info at the end

For my own artist statement it's hard to know what to say. I have never been one to talk openly about myself or my work and never really feel confident in myself or any work that I do. I will write it in the first person as I feel it would be strange to try to write about myself on the third person and as I have no real attributes, I can only base it on my personal information as well as some more detail about the project itself.

Amanda Kingston-Lynch
Artist Statement

"My interest in photography started at a young age, using the camera to document my youth and the people and experiences that moulded me. Born and still currently based in the beautiful coastline of South Wales, my interest quickly evolved into Landscape photography, using only my camera phone to assist me. My early photography consisted of seascapes, sunsets and castle ruins, through the abundance of monuments in my local area.
'Exploring Home' is a collection inspired by William Gilpin's 'Observations of the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales, relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty' (London,1782). Using part of Gilpin's route through South Wales, I visited some of the monuments that he discovered and also added in a few more on the route that Gilpin did not mention in his work. My intention was to create a series "in Gilpins footsteps' but also by adding in further monuments, I have added my own personal connection to the series. My younger self was fascinated by the historical and strangeness of these places but now I wanted to capture not only the sublime factor of these ruins but also the beauty of them."





Sources:
http://photomichaelwolf.com/#introduction
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/jon_rafman.htm
http://angelsbarcelona.com/en/artists/joan-fontcuberta/bio/
http://www.yossimilo.com/exhibitions/2012-10-doug_rickard//