I am a photographer, for the most part a film photographer. I do not hold to a particular genre or system or style, preferring to work across a broader canvass. My biggest influences have probably been the “Two Rays” – Tony Ray-Jones and Ray Moore.

For me photography is not about art or politics, identity or gender or society. These things may impinge in a secondary way; indeed they are often intended as primary attributes.

But photography is primarily about seeing. Seeing is a personal activity in which the subject-object model that we normally think is the basis of cognition (the model of representation) is questioned. Through looking, the world is disclosed to us in all its familiarity. Through seeing this familiarity is questioned and particularity emerges. Photography helps us to bridge this gap between looking and seeing. It is a continuing process of literacy with the world in which things that address us are revealed in a certain way. ‘The subject is not the object; it is a new unity, a lyricism which grows completely from the means’ (George Braque).

Seeing is very much a solitary affair, in Raymond Moore’s words, ‘convey(ing) an awareness or revelation of the marvellous’.

Altar, Tunbridge Church North Dakota, USA; FP4+ developed in PMK-Pyro; Printed on Ilford MGWT semi-matt using Ansco 120 developer diluted 1:3. Partially Selenium toned.

I hope there is something of value in these pages.

Kind Regards, Tony Cearns.