martin cregg photography

Institutional works (2010-2011)

2011-11-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

This short collection of works have be undertaken as part of the Institutional Works scheme of the Reflexions Masterclass. The work itself examines Institutional spaces (many of which are in a stage of transition, of some form or another). The buildings in question are largely cultural buildings such as the Maison De La Photographie (Paris), Foundazione de Venezia (Venice) and the University of Lugano (Switzerland).

Point of Departure...Another Year

2011-06-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

This little series is part of the ongoing ‘The Photo Course’ project, which explores the enviornment of a Photographic Course in Dublin.Part of this work reflects on the ‘void’ that I experience every year at this particular time, when I say goodbye to another group of students that I have worked with in the college.

There is a sense of vacancy throughout. In the last couple of years, on the final day of college, I have become accustomed to the ritual of ‘hanging around’ – waiting until everyone has left the building and I have an overwhelming feeling of being alone. It provides some space – to think, to reflect and to photograph. I contemplate the year(s), the people, the conversations, the activities and the struggles of the preceding months. The natural thing for me to do, at this point, is to photograph. The approach is studied - meditative, maybe. The physical surroundings and minutae within it are photographed when it is bereft of the energy and synergy of students and tutors. There is always, in my mind, the reality of times relentless melt - the passing of years and the subtle changes to the environment left by the transience of people. Thus, the work speaks of ‘detachment’.

The work is also about subtle and ephemeral micro-events which happen in the duration of a day, a week, a year, which become part of the history of the building. As we move forward we create and we construct. We develop and perform ideas and discourse physically in and on the environment. We shape that environment through our mental and physical interactions, day upon day, year upon year. We also destruct. Destruction is part of the creative process. In my practice I have always been attracted to subtle traces of destruction, be it in this project or other projects (Note to self: Perhaps it is the balance of construction and destruction, the cycles of each, that are the core of this and other work).

The act of photographing these traces, these physical detachments, this gentle destruction, actually helps me to grasp and ‘possess’ the illusive feelings and losses that I experience at this time. Photography becomes a kind of meditative process, a process which helps me to psychologically bridge these transitions (Note to self: Is it all about loss?) It speaks to me, in a profound way, of a certain reality of these transient, ephemeral relationships which are built year upon year between myself and my students and, in a less profound way, of the relationships between (photographic) discourse, practice and the environment (of photography).

Generation to Generation (Ongoing Work)

2011-02-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

“No past, no future, no, not even a present, there was’nt even a memory"

Hubert Selby Jr.
Song of the Silent Snow

‘Generation to Generation’ (proposed title) is a complex exploration the relationship between myself and my rural background, my sense of heritage and the obligation of tradition connected to the landscape. I have been exploring that delicate and uncomfortable balancing-act between belonging and disassociation. I find myself longing to connect, or reconnect, to the place or with the landscape. Yet, the overriding impression or feeling is one of ‘distance’.

“…and living roots awaken in my head"

There are virtues which ennoble the rural character, at least to those of us who have grown up with the conditional rhetoric of ‘The Land’ ingrained into every part of our individual and collective psyche. These virtues of labour, of heritage, of tradition; of generational cycles, of possession, of culture and the preservation of each, give the landscape a value and a meaning beyond its physical state. On the outset, I am not questioning these virtues or these traditions - I value them beyond reason.

I see my ‘role’ as someone who can (visually) express something about the nature, the complexities of generational gaps, the complexities of a sense of heritage - which is bound by head, by heart, by tradition, to feel an obligation to the landscape.

It is easy to say that I am a typical example of my generation who has turned his back on rural life and is, in a very insolent manner, betraying my heritage. I am aware of these perceptions. I have heard all the local mutterings I can stomach. Yet, this does not scratch the surface of the complexity of the condition. Yes, there is a lingering sense of guilt in breaking inherited traditions of farming, of labour, of connection. But this is ‘the condition’ that I have the absolute necessity, above all else, to explore. This is my impulse, this is who I am.

I consider, to sidetrack a little, John B Keanes ‘The Field’ – where the darker side of this attachment is acted-out in a malevolent and eventually violent way. Through its main character – ‘The Bull McCabe’ - there is a stubborn assertion of selfhood and identity, through ownership, which leads to the act of murder of one man by another - both of whom have competing claims to “The Land”. The larger questions raised, for me, by this powerful work are interesting ones: is the culture of ‘The Land’ in McCabes world psychologically corrupted through this necessity of ownership and is it essentially worth preserving. In a sense, this question expresses something dark, petulant, unnecessary with the ideology of attachment. There is a glorification of sacrifice – sacrifice of morals, of friends, of family, of community, of reason, to hold onto and assert ones heritage; which at times is imaginary. The brutality and assertion of fixed beliefs, of loyalty to these ideals, open up questions of what we have become and of the darker side of possession and tradition. This ‘darker side’ is not one I wish to explore at this point, yet, I concede does exist in my world in various manifestations.

I feel I am working with, and exploring, a ‘real’ psychological condition that exists with many of my generation of rural people who, possibly, do not feel the necessity or sense of connection with rural life or with the world of their father. Heaney, Kavanagh amongst others have expressed this condition and this complexity with words. To express it visually allows for me a re-negotiation of, not just self, but of the density of the photographic language. I concede that photography is a limited form of expression. We rely on surface - on grain, and how we use it determines the meaning we are trying to communicate. Just as the feelings and emotions can not manifest themselves within any ‘pallette’ of given words – guilt, responsibility, hatred, revulsion, love, freedom, possibly. Close. I am also limited to the expression of these complexities through visual means – through the camera. Here, the sensations manifest themselves within a whole new syntax: guilt, aperture, insecurity, exposure, framing, anger, light, focus, love, tripod.

Visually, the latest direction of my work has a strong sense of atmosphere and an aesthetic I am trying to push – the aesthetic of whiteness (its colour photography, as close to Black & White as possible – or simply ‘White’ photography?). This is, for now, a winter project. In this particular body of work, the whiteness of the landscape, for me, fits perfectly with the sense of detachment, with capturing the landscape at a point in its seasonal cycle when it has its least growth, its least value. At this moment, I feel a freedom of the correct expression of the condition I want to explore – no past, no future, no memory, no pathos, no nostalgia - just there, dealing with the emotion and non-emotion of the ties that bind. I cannot make sense of the landscape in any other way. I cannot make sense of a reason to photograph the landscape in any other way. I also cannot make sense of the ideology of the virtues of rural life as ‘grounded’ above the virtues of other ways of life, nor of the necessity to repress an artistic spirit and my personal sense of the absolute value and necessity for expression in opposition to this way of life. They co-exist in my world. This expression is located somewhere deep within contradictory impulses – the need to create and the need to bow to tradition, the need to be there and the need to escape, the need to be self-determining and to be my fathers son. I feel that the work comes from a place – a territory that is physical and emotional. It comes from the inside of this place. One conclusion could be read is the re-assuring fact that I have a deep attachment to this place, to what it means and to expressing this through the only means I know how.

For now, I work on the land in this way, for now.

The White Project ( December 2010)

2010-12-12T02:07:00.000-08:00

“Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.”

The following images are part of an ongoing project which works with a combination of things - the monochromatic, the act of vision and with layering. The selection of images, in many ways, represent an essential characteristic of my work over the last year or so. In some of my projects, I have been moving towards an approach that is less and less ‘descriptive’, more evocative, more abstract; but still keeping this abstraction grounded to a degree in the real.

In many of the images there is no clear subject. They try to call the viewer’s attention to the lack of concrete and material reality of subject matter. They evoke questions: What are we looking at? What is in front and what is behind the surface? What is the surface? The sense of vision, the absence of the subject and an ambiguity of sight is essentially an important effect. To a degree I am dealing with issues similar to those involved in the work of Uta Barth whose ‘out of focus’ images of domestic enviornments uses blur purely as an expression of the organic act of seeing. By focusing on where the subject would be in a conventional photograph, Barth turns the viewer into the subject. Her work is, essentially, about the act of looking and the act of photographic vision. In my approach, however, I want to share my own visual experience with the viewer - to include a sense of personal sight within the work.

Working with a minimalist palette is also an important feature here. I am, of course, furthering a tendency of producing colour images that are almost black and white. The ‘whiteness’ of the work is a direction that I want to continue in many of my projects. This was suggested to me at the last RM meeting in Paris. The whiteness of the sky and the ‘graphic’ of whiteness in the Suspended State work drew a number of interesting comments. I was strongly advised to push and push this type of abstraction as far as possible and still keep the work overtly ‘documentary’ - to keep it connected to a material objective reality. I think that this is the territory I am working within for the last year or so. For the ongoing project ‘Home’, for instance, this approach has helped me to understand something about my disengagement from landscape and from the past; for 'Suspended State' it has been a conceptual feature of my photographic relationship to abandoned spaces. It is an important strategy which I hope to continue to explore throughout the next few months.

Top to Bottom:
Dublin from 51C Bus (Dec 2010)
Maison Des La Photographie, Paris (Nov 2010)
Seascape (Nov 2010)

Dublin (Dec 2010)
Maison Des La Photographie, Paris (Nov 2010)

Approaching the Theme of Utopia (Nov 2010)

2010-11-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

The following samples of work were presented in the Reflexions Masterclass forum during the Mois De La Photographie in Paris (Nov 2010). One of the challenges of participating in such an event is the heavy demands to create, prepare and present work on a specific assigned theme within a very short period of time. The pressure to create is largely accredited to the knowledge I have of the intensity of the experience of these presentations and the presence of such esteemed and informed artists and guests, with whom I have to share my work. It is daunting and testing; but stimulating and energizing at the same time. One of the benefits of such a thematic task is the possibility (at times necessity) to change and alter ones style, approach or direction, for instance. It also encourages, for me, a type of re-negotiation of self – provoking questions of exactly what ‘type’ of photographer I have become and how I have allowed myself to become this way.

With the thematic works there is also the opportunity to investigate or develop a previous subject matter or project. My starting point for the theme ‘Utopia’ was a ‘mini-project’ that I worked on in 2004. The work as a whole, at the time, was ‘thin’ to say the least. I didn’t fully understand the topic, or indeed photography to any great degree. But, I liked to (try to) make disconcerting photographs at the time and was starting to think about using the camera to respond to real social conditions. For the purposes of the RM, I decided to expand on this project in the context of the specific conditions of today.

Utopias’ are generally ‘models’ proposing an alteration in reality or ‘models’ to understand reality. These conceptual models propose invented places - places constructed in the imagination. In this case, constructed in an ideal future. This connection with an imaginary and an unattainable social condition is inescapable. This reality/imaginary duality can help to devise a useful categorization of a central feature to the theme itself and an interesting point of departure for what would be considered a side-project for the moment. My concentration is on places which are surrounded by a certain utopian trope – advertising hoardings and images which project an ideal futuristic environment. However what is presented is the failure of Utopia. Damaged hoardings surrounding abandoned environments in Dublin, Netherlands and Morocco. (Note to Self: The diversity of location is something worth persuing?)

Notes: One thing is undoubted: the camera creates its own reality, regardless. My intention is to re-inforce the sense of the imaginary. This sense of confusion is an important sensory strategy to represent this theme – introducing a more dynamic and playful focus, use of colour, etc. It was/is important to keep my ‘personality’ within the work, but, perhaps transform my ‘palette’, if you like, perhaps reinforce more energy, more visual stimulation. The subject demanded a suitable approach, yet, still contain a similar vision which is consistent with my ongoing projects.

Some Recent Works

2010-10-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Suspended State (September 2010)

2010-09-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

In, Around and Afterthoughts: On ‘Suspended State’ (September 2010 )

2010-09-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

'I live my best in the landscape, being at ease there' - John Hewitt, Poet

‘Suspended State’ has charted the topographical changes which have occurred in Ireland over the last 6 years or more – from the height of economic activity (and its effects on the landscape) right through to recession times (and the visible effects on the landscape). Throughout the process of developing this work, there has been a necessity to consciously, and un-consciously at times, adapt an ever-changing approach to suit an ever-changing landscape.

My intention has always been to ‘express’, somehow, the sensitivity I feel and experience when drifting around these changing landscapes; to offer a fresh perception and visually react to that special connection to landscape that I feel. I have always had an impulse to do this work (I am guided mainly by my impulse when it comes to photography). My impulsion to work, and the ‘ease’ I feel when working has become my raison d’etre over the last number of years. I have never really understood why. I have been told that it has to do with loss (I have experienced loss in its various forms throughout my life, and, yes, this makes sense). It has been suggested to me that it also is my way of connecting to that which I feel disconnected to – namely the landscape and a need to feel a compensatory attachment to it (yes, given my rural background, this also makes sense). But, I try not to delve too much into the latent reasons and internal motivating factors behind my work.

However, there comes a time, when at mid stream, that you need to check how fast the water is moving. As I now enter, as I do every year at this time, a period of relative hibernation, and concentrate on re-directing my energy and focus onto teaching life and shift emphasis for a while onto my students work again. With 50-odd in first year and 38 in second year I am feeling anxious and uneasy at the prospect of not finding a calm balance, amid the caos of college life to contemplate and reflect on my own work with a clear and lucid head-space. This is especially difficult in a place where there are heavy financial, spatial and other limitations placed on a handful of tutors to deliver as much as they can in a short period of time.

So as I set about fitting my teacher-head again, I am at the realization that this current cycle of work with what has come to be titled ‘Suspended State’ is coming to a necessary end. However, I am in a most positive frame of mind. I have been lucky enough to find ‘that place’ a number of times recently and come to several fresh understandings about the whole journey and process of dealing with the project as well as deciding on a few directions leading to, hopefully, some closure and an exhibition of the work in the near future.

Visual Notebook
I have started to keep a visual diary again for this work. This was something I used a lot in college and something I encourage my own students to do. Ideas evaporate. The diary is a collection of ongoing notes, ideas, sample images, drawings, sketches, similar artists’ work, proposed exhibition plans; scribbles, doodles and coffee rings. It is the physical manifestation of the ongoing thought process, which facilitates the conceptualization of the body of work up to that point, and has helped me to find direction for that process. It gives me something tangible to sit with – on busses, at breakfast, at work - with which to consider approaches and ideas. It has become my external brain to an extent and something which I feel is an integral part of how I work (below are some Samples of Pages and Selected notes)

Issues of Audience (Diary Notes: July 2010)
I have settled on some issues of ‘audience’ that have been bugging me for some time. By ‘audience’ I am alluding to the ‘ideal viewer’ which, as Jeff wall suggested, exists in the mind of every artist. For instance, if the work is trying to express a social issue, that audience is a large segment of society; if it is conceptual art, then maybe a more art-savvy, informed and discerning viewer. Issues of ‘elitism’ abound, I have discovered that my work, while to some extent is open-ended when it comes to what any given individual can ‘get’ from the work, has got an ‘ideal viewer’. This is evident in my decision process thus far, as I have become more and more submerged into the work (Note to self, June 2010: “I have also to question whether people see this project solely as social commentary when frankly I do not?”) I have to acknowledge that my work was not about the recession, not about the landscape, not about social conditions, not about the economic conditions, not about documenting what is simply there. It is, at some levels all of these things. But, at its very essence, my work is also not about these things. It was and is, however, in its very nature, about one thing – its about ‘photography’! It was and is about my own explorations of photography – about changing approaches, about forcing a certain vision that I hope to me my own, about finding the right expression to suit the ‘aura’ of the landscape; it was about consciously adapting my approach to an ever-changing landscape which would somehow ‘express’ the social, cultural and economic condition or ‘state’ of my country as reflected in the landscape. It is a complex interplay between subject and that subjects representation. I feel I used the landscape, the economic reality of that landscape, to explore photography. My audience are people who may recognize and identify with this. Maybe?.

Abstract Documentary (Diary Notes: July 2010)
Another question to be grappled with is: How far abstract can one go and still remain documentary? What may seem a contradiction in terms is something I like to explore. In fact at the last meeting of Reflexions Masterclass, director of the European House of Photography Jean-Luc Monterosso commented that this approach was a nice ‘hook’ throughout my work which ‘pulled and pushed’ the viewer in extreme ways. The lack of sense of scale needs, at certain points, to be ‘grounded’ in reality. Yet, not too much. (Note to self: should the tripod, when visual in the picture, be in the same position every time?)

Rhetoric, Document and Lunar Landings (Diary Notes: Sept 2010)
There is a rhetoric of ‘suspension’ implicit in many of the images (the title itself suggests a country in a condition of economic immobility). There is also in parts the perception that one is ‘suspended’ – hovering, floating, hanging over these landscapes – where there is no real sense of scale or size; where there is a disconcerting lack of contact with the physical and with the real (Note to self: Can this express anything about the psychological condition of the present?) There is also a visual rhetoric of ‘exploration’ in some of the images – one is, hopefully, subtly reminded of the visual iconography of lunar landings and visually connect the terrestrial ambiguities presented in here (Note to Self: Why this approach?)

Closure!?!
This particular cycle of work is coming to a necessary end. I am struggling to bring a sort of closure to this project. The reality that this does not suit a book format, that it is most effective when printed large and experienced in a gallery context, is a positive realization for me. My plan is to find out-of-gallery locations to exhibit (perhaps empty shop units, factories, or maybe a one night exhibition in the darkness of an abandoned estate in Longford, for instance). I am unsure at this point about the financial realities that may thwart my wild ideas, but, its worth a shot. I feel the work is at its most relevant right now and it needs to be shown. I may need help! Any sympathetic philanthropists out there take note.

'Fugitive Acts' - Mediations On Micro-Events (Aug 2010)

2010-08-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

"...decided that I need a fresh approach to my photography...more freedom...less reductive, less restrictive..less 'thought-about'..more intuitive..more 'poetic'..more energy..."
- Extract from my visual journal, June 18th 2008

Part of my own personal evolution as an artist has been to adapt, to change and to find new ways of expression through the use and exploration of photography. It has become important to me to continuously change my relationship to the medium; to feel the freedom to be a mutable creature in my attitude and utilization of photography itself.

My practice is not about finding a ‘rule’ – a style, a method, an approach or a solid format and work within it. (Note: An example of this ‘rule’ is found in the work of many of my photographic ‘heroes’ - for instance, you only have to look at Robert Adams’ anthology of work, which traverses generations, to see a this notion; or look at the approaches of The Bechers or Reneke Dijkstras to see a strict adherence to a rule or maybe a necessary resistance to changing their practice). For me, it is not about finding such an overall rule of practice. Yet, it is about finding a certain rule for each project I embark on. For instance, using a different format or even camera which suits that approach to that specific project. I am not resistant to even severe changes in my practice, if it suits the subject or the direction I am taking.

The joy I feel in my own practice is mainly due to the fact that I feel I am constantly trying to find new modes of expression. I have found that refreshing my approach allows me to keep a certain dynamic and enthusiasm within my work. There is also a motivating factor in doing so. I like the naivety, maybe, of starting again. I like to keep perfection at a distance (in any case, I think I am technically poor in many areas of my practice) and concentrate on the process of exploration of photography – to continuously learn and discover (or re-discover) the medium. I feel that confronting the world in multifarious ways keeps my relationship with photography alive and fresh.

I have found myself, in recent years, hovering between looking at the medium and looking at the subject; contemplating that space in-between, where there are multifarious possibilities and considerations – hence the shifting and swinging between photographic styles and approaches. Recently I have been working with unexpected angles, playful positioning, awkward croppings; using fraught diagonal lines and working with a shifting perception (as visible in my ongoing ‘Photography Course’ work). Yet, I feel that I am still trying to maintain the physicality of the images relationship to the real world and keep an energy and visual clarity alive - even in abstraction.

The idea of ‘fugitive’ acts is a relatively new territory for me – concentrating on these ‘micro-events’ which happen in everyday life – yet only seem to have a brief existence on our imagination.

What are Micro-Events? (Random Notes from Scrapbook)
…they are qoutidian in character/ vistiges of domestic life/ mediations on how we sculpt, inter-relate with our environment/ ephemeral forms/ detritus of everyday life/ slight gestures/ Details/ visually resonant minutae/ Non-specific events/ personal, photographic ‘acts’ / Fragments and fields of focus/ Its about finding and making the drama of everyday life/ These acts or ‘events’ are transformed by the camera - giving this micro-universe a pictorial charge and encouraging a contemplation on daily life/ Exploring the ambiguities of the everyday world and our/my imprints on it – temporary or otherwise – different levels of temporality/ Relationships of form, space, light, focus, attention, imprints, ‘events’ …

Honeymoon Bed, Marrakesh. June 2010Street Game, Marrakesh. June 2010Chair on Final Day of School, Dublin. May 2010Viewing Deck For Plane Spotters, Leeuwarden. July 2010Coffee Cup, Reahus, Fryslan. July 2010

Viewing Sopt for Plane Spotters, Leeuwarden. July 2010Ripped Poster, Leeuwarden. July 2010Torn Curtain, Ossouria, Morocco. July 2010

Benefits of this Project (Notes to Self)
• It also allows flexibility – to search my archives and re-contextualize forgotten images.
• It will be an ongoing project - events which traverse the context of city, country, time, etc.
• I hope to contextualize, (to find a ‘Rule’) maybe, several categories of such work over time – one could be, for example, an idea of ’26 Assorted Misdemeanours’ – micro-crimes in the city or several cities(?)

'Postcards From The Celtic Tiger' - Xuhui, Shanghai July 2010

2010-07-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

POSTCARDS FROM THE CELTIC TIGER confronts the radical contrasts resulting from massive shifts caused by the economic boom to the recent downturn, presenting a collective vision of contemporary Ireland through visual art.

Using photography, video and sound to challenge stereotypical metaphors relating to Irish landscape, or employing collage and digital imagery to respond to recent changes, the artworks range from the satirical to a subtle, visual poetry. Also included are pieces utilizing strong documentary practises and found footage reflecting current events and trends in Irish society, from the Peace Process to youth culture.

Postcards from the Celtic Tiger is made possible with support from Culture Ireland, Cork City Council, The Irish Embassy in Shanghai China, the Culture Bureau in th Xuihui district, Sirius Arts Centre, Cork Film Centre and the Arts Council. . This exhibition is the next chapter of important cultural twinning activites between Cobh, Cork City and the Xuhui Disctrict in Shanghai, China. The exhibition links in with other outside events connected to Expo 2010 currently taking place in Shanghai. For more informaiton please contact: Peggy Sue Amison at: psamison@yahoo.com or: 087 633 1974.

‘The Photo Course’: The Point of Departure (June 2010)

2010-05-27T05:08:00.000-07:00

“…All in all you’re just another brick in the wall…..” – Pink Floyd, The Wall

This series is part of the ongoing ‘The Photo Course’ project. I wanted to do something which reflects the ‘void’ that I experience every year at this particular time, when I say goodbye to another group of students that I have worked with in the college. I can only describe this void as something akin to the end of a relationship, when there is an over-riding feeling of sad reflection – an uneasy emptiness at a time of transition.

There is a sense of vacancy about my series of blank exhibiting boards, for instance. They are taken just after the students take their work down after their end of year show. The little squares are one half of the hanging mechanisms which remain attached after the work is stripped from the boards. This work is not about resentment or antipathy towards students or towards my job. Its about ‘detachment’. It speaks of a certain reality of these transient, ephemeral relationships which are built year upon year between myself and my students. In a way, it is my attempt to deal with the departure of people who I have invested so much paternal energy and time into - ‘facilitating learning’ as the textbooks proclaim. This series reflects that point of departure. Maybe that feeling that is manifest in me has to do with the reality that these boards and those half hanging mechanisms are all that is physically left for me after my yearly investments in other peoples work. There is also the reality of times relentless melt and the passing of yet another year.

The following images were taken on my last day, when the building was empty and I floated around aimlessly looking for..'something':

June 2nd 2010

The following Images were taken before and after and around some of my classes with this years graduates (September 2008 - May 2010).

Sept 29th 2008. Class 3. Notes
After 907 class. Feb 2009
Sept 2008.

Approaching the Theme of Borders: Some Considerations, Past and Present

2010-05-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

The theme of 'Borders' is part of my presentation to the 2010 Reflexions Masterclass in Basel. Each participant was asked to approach notions of ‘Borders’ in Photography. The following blog-post contains some musings on how my work to date may have dealt with borders. I like the idea that I can revisit old work (even some I really do not like to acknowledge or necessarily want to share) and re-contextualize it within a chosen theme. Maybe I can learn about what kind of photographer I am from such a practice.

On Defining Borders
Borders define certain spaces. They immediately give notions of demarcating geographic boundaries - separating nations, cultural entities, economies and peoples. They signify division - conflicted or contested landscapes, either side of a divide, which are forced into duality and opposition. In this regard, a border represents history drawing lines in the sands of geography. It is the definite entity inscribed into a landscape - the ‘place’ where there is a union, a contact-point, a barrier or a separation.

On Border Experiences
Yet, every border is equipped with its own set of conditions. Personally, I think of my trips through-out South-East Asia and the various crossing-points between countries: the 5ft wide river that separates Burma from Thailand in Tachilek and the stark differences between the two places; the presumably unauthorized border control I encountered while entering Cambodia from Laos on a small wooden boat – where an ‘officer’ dressed in army gear from the waist up and Bermuda shorts from the waist down stamped my passport before I was swindled out of 5o dollars to retrieve my backpack, which had been anchored off shore in a boat by three local grifters. I think of Laos itself – a country defined from a buffer zone to keep waring factions apart. I think of the time I mistakenly entered into American soil from the Canadian side without my passport (just trying to take a picture, stupid kid, of where they both meet) and suffered the humiliation of hyper-strict border controls on both sides. I also think of the boat crossing between Tarifa in Spain over to Tangiers and the distinct cultural differences between North Africa and Southern Europe.

Tachilek, Thai/Burma Border. 2005

Cambodia. 2005

Interzone. Tangiers. 2002

On Borders Within the Image
A constant physical and psychological ‘border’ within all photography is the barrier(s) which exist between the photographer and the world photographed. Just by looking at my image from Tangiers, for instance, we can identify this to a degree. This image fell out of two-three rolls of film I shot whilst I approached the coast of Tangiers from Spain. This was my first sight of North Africa and was a visually stimulating couple of minutes and the image is amongst my favourites from my work to date. But, briefly, and in a critical way, we can suggest three borders which inhabit and are enclosed within the image itself – apart from the obvious border photographed between North Africa and Europe. Firstly, the border between my own subjective perspective and the physical surface of the world I am looking at. Secondly, the glass of the docking boat which adds to this sense of distance between inside and outside and maybe adds to the ‘being-there-ness’ quality of the image. And, finally, the actions of the camera itself - focus, use of depth of field, blur, etc - which reinforce that distance and emphasize that boundary between inside and outside worlds, between subjective and objective perspectives. The camera makes each invisible to an extent. When Susan Sontag suggests that images “hide more than they reveal” she is partly referencing this very notion. The photographer tries to naturalize the images true-to-nature views and hide the construction beneath the seductive surface of the image. Here it is evident. I wanted the viewer to share my visual experience of that moment of that scene as it opened up in front of my eyes. Similarly, the below images of a morning in a hotel in Marseille and the water seperating North and South New Zealand try to share the sense of visual experience and share my sense of zest for that subjective moment.

On Conflict and Duality
I remember one of my tutors in IADT, Mick Wilson, telling me that there was always a suggestion of ‘conflict’ within many of my images that was, maybe, a bit too ‘obvious’. True, much of my photography at that point seemed to work directly at times on a type of duality between two opposite objects or ideas within the image – for instance a lot of work I did placed a direct relationship between the ideals of the advertisement billboards of the Celtic Tiger against the ‘reality’ of the surrounding environment. Or the below image of the prosperity of Bangkok against the poverty of the city. Barthes in Camera Lucida had suggested that many images - or messages, to be more appropriate to his argument, seem to work in this way. I think I was trying to create ‘messages’, or something to that effect. But, I feel that these images were stepping stones in my development, and were a way of both looking at the world critically through the camera and trying to make my images more than just ‘pretty’ pictures; ones that maybe were making statements about the world I knew. Over the years I have tried to be a bit more subtle in this approach, maybe more suggestive.

Future Projections. Napoli. 2001

Bangkok. 2004

New World. Wellington, NZ. 2004

On the Theme of Urban vs Nature
A common motif, however, running through-out my work, is one which references an ‘urban vs nature’, or ‘human development vs nature’ approach. Informed, to a degree by legacy of Atget, or the work of the New Topographics, this is evident in the very early work from the midlands project – a very definite theme which dealt with the increasing development of housing estates and industrial estates in small rural towns. The below image, for instance, displays the almost violent rupture of nature with such development. While the image on the right references the ongoing struggle with an unruly nature – someone has painted over the moss on the wall. (Note to self: what is interesting in this image is that I had started to think about referencing landscape traditions, or maybe subvert traditions, by making spaces look like broader landscape compositions, etc. This is something I have carried on throughout my practice over the last few years).

On Undefined Borders
Part of the Midlands work, in essence, dealt with the notion that while many areas have demarcation points, the ‘midlands’ was essentially an undefined entity – a non-geographic, non-place which was under constant construction and redefinition at the height of the development. The work suggested and described the ‘porosity’ of the sorts of borders that existed in both rural towns due to suburbanization and the conceptual expansion of the midlands region. It was difficult to identify any definite border which demarcated where the midlands began and where it ended. I remember seeing shop units and commercial paint vans in Wexford and in Mayo, for instance, which proclaimed their business as ‘Midlands Electrical’ or ‘Midlands Paint Contractors’. Thus, maybe part of the project suggested that the Midlands was partly defined through commercial desires to break out of the limitations of ‘the local’. (Sidenote: An underlying theme of the project showed the effects of globalization, maybe, and economic ‘liberalization’, or speculative lassie-faire economic policies, which have made traditional borders increasingly impermeable.)

On the Subjective Border
Photography can also explore borders from an autobiographical perspective according to subjective perception. On a deeper level, a border can relate to an opposition between an inside and an outside world – between subjective and objective or between what is intimate and what is external. My recent ‘Sketches From Home’ series is about the relationship between my rural background and my photographic work – a reflexive body of work which tries to explore, in a real way, the sense of guilt, the sense of ambivilance to breaking family lineages, maybe(?). With this project there is a direct attempt to explore the tension between two impulses – tradition vs artistic. The camera can, in this regard, bring together two worlds for a clearer understanding of both.

With this on-going work, there are also vulnerabilities. To allow others to visually trespass into my inviolable space (again, crossing my own personal boundaries). Here others can view how I negotiate my own nature through photography - a medium that has opened up new worlds and perspectives to me. Hopefully people will understand that I try to explore my nature in an open and honest way. I feel that much of the works I have seen of this theme of ‘lost traditions’ when it comes to rural life is documented by outsiders who naturally promote a strong sense of ‘loss’ or demise (of culture, or tradition, or whatever) or a highly emotive sense of pathos. The real conditions of rural life to the outsider is mis-understood. I want my work to be as subjective as it can be – to explore the real conditions of my own relationship with rural life. I no longer live in rural Ireland, but it is very much a part of who I am. I feel that each time I use the camera, I force a new understanding of my life, my culture, the landscape, and the medium of photography itself and how and why I use it.

Sidenote: On Approaching Borders

2010-05-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Between the Ideal and the reality. Kho Samui, Thailand. 2004

Broken Visions Series, Wellington, New Zealand 2004

Torn European Election Poster, Prague, 2007

Self Portrait with Queuing Ships, Singapore 2005

Divisions, Phnom Penh. 2005

Self Portrait with Homeless Man. Naploli. 2001

Camping Ground. Australia. 2005

IFSC, Dublin. 2005

From the Series Thirdspace. Just before the opening of new buildings in Dublin’s Docklands. 2005

Foreign Eyes on Fryslan: Six Images

2010-05-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

‘Low-level Landscapes’

2010-04-25T13:15:00.001-07:00

The series ‘Low-Level Landscapes’ is part of the Foreign Eyes on Fryslan commission and essentially comprises of a focussed body of work which deals with the low lying terrains of North Fryslan. My objective was to find an appropriate way to represent the topographics of the area in question. The landscapes themselves are ‘claimed’ from the sea and are implausibly flat. Looking at the horizons themselves caused a bit of a disconcerted feeling in truth. It seemed difficult to find a sense of scale or distance. There was a sense of repetition to the way that each area of land was separated which led itself to a certain approach which I decided to adopt.Control and organization is the key here. The actual landscapes themselves are controlled. One of the underlying themes of the projects I did was that command over nature that is an important part of the physical reality of rural Fryslan, and indeed part of the Fryslan rhetoric. One thing that was made clear to me was that every inch of land is used, well organized, well controlled, well managed and each has a distinct purpose. Further to this every natural resource is utilized to some degree. Easy to see that we here in Ireland could learn a lot from these methods of land use and resource management. I have carried this control element through the approach that I have taken – a rigorous geometry which I feel represents the landscapes of the north of Fryslan best. The work adopts a more ‘German’ approach to documentary. But it also keeps within Dutch landscape traditions – subverting them in a way. The representations of landscapes in Dutch pictorialist traditions keep a low horizon approach to draw attention to the epic and sublime cloud features. My approach is to draw attention to these consistently flat and compact areas of land. This approach means a more neutral, debased skyline and an emphasis on the topographic differences. The approach follow interconnecting photographic (and artistic) traditions which have informed much of my work to date. Firstly, they are photographed in a tradition of Neue Sachlichkeit, or ‘new objectivity’ – a more detached and objective approach to documentary which dates back to the 1920’s Germany. This approach uses, for instance, grids and ‘typologies’ to display their images in a formal order (for instance, subjects and objects photographed in a similar manner and grouped into ‘types’ which allow comparative study between each). This approach displays a minimalist quality which was prescient to later photographic work that appealed to the Conceptualism of the early 1970s (my work has adapted elements of Conceptual Art). Such approaches can also be found in the work of the generation of American photographers, such as the ‘New Topographics’, who have since come to be understood as marking an important shift in Landscape practice; offering a ‘re-thinking’ of landscape traditions in the 1970s. Interesting that this movement can, to a degree, be seen as a reaction to the pictorialist, utopian photography of, for instance, Ansel Adams who adamantly depicted the American landscape as an entity of unscathed and organic beauty. In effect, the photographers of the New Topographics movement strove to show the rapidly increasing imprint that man was imparting on the landscape. They turned their cameras towards newly built tract houses, industrial parks, expansive highways and commercial strip malls as proof of man's impetuous development. These approaches have informed my Midlands work and, to a degree, the recent continuation of this project - ‘Suspended State’ and I found that this approach is a fitting way to represent the landscapes of the north of Fryslan.

'Foreign Eyes On Fryslan' (Three Images)

2010-04-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

On Process: 'Notes by an Open Window' (from Foreign Eyes on Fryslan - Part 1 of 5)

2010-04-18T10:31:00.001-07:00

This little sequence was taken mid-process, while I was trying to tease out possible ideas for my 12 days in Fryslan. These notes to self were an attempt to assess my work to date - little ideas and reminders that I keep, as I work, of where I have been and what I had being doing. Above all else, the notes are part of the struggle with trying to find a direction for the following days.

These images (of the notes) are essentially about the process of making work. Maybe there is a touch of reflexivity or self-reflexivity within this collection. They are part of the evolution of ideas - the notes which move the ideas and the process along which then become part of the finished work. (I have incorporated this approach into my practice over the last year or so – visible in, for instance, my on-going ‘Photo Course’ work).

The title also references the famous Vermeer painting “Girl Reading A Letter By An Open Window’ (just to pull the work back into a Dutch context). The light that illuminates the paper is the beautiful evening sunshine which is radiating through the open window in my studio apartment in Leeuwarden. It made me think of Vermeers work – the never changing position of his array of subjects beside his studio window, the warm glow on the letter or objects or subjects themselves.

In, Around and Afterthoughts (On The Fryslan Commission)

2010-04-01T11:07:00.001-07:00

I have been meandering around the north of The Netherlands for the past four days, in a beautiful place called Fryslan, on my first proper European commission. The experience so far is a mixed bag of feelings and outcomes - its stressful at times, its tiring at times, energizing at times. It's lonely, its 'nomadic'; I suppose I feel like an outsider coming into the unique atmosphere of the north sea. This is the idea. I have been trying to get a sense of place and then respond to it. The project 'Foreign Eyes' (on Fryslan) suggests that someone somewhere prompted the idea that maybe the region has been represented in a similar way through photography for too long and they want an outsider to trespass and re-negotiate it.

The work thus far is arbitrary. I cannot visualize a single coherent project. So far, I believe I have the 'bones' of several potential bodies of work; though it is difficult to command an approach when you do not have any printed material to assess (one problem with the analogue process, I suppose). One such speculative body of work which has appeared is called 'Broken Landscapes'. These are taken from places which are allocated as viewing decks for scenery. My views deny the audience the actual landscape itself - broken up by obstacles and seperated by, for instance, glass on bus shelters, my car window, etc. I am imagining these will have a painterly-like effect which might be interesting. Another proposed project is one I have entitled simply 'Low-Level Landscapes' - more of a 'Becher-type' approach to documenting these consistantly flat and compact areas of land seperated by canals. I am torn between this 'German' approach (meaning a more neutral, debased skyline and an emphasis on the topographic differences) and referencing the classic Dutch landscape style (which, for example, also contain lower horizons which made it possible to emphasize the often impressive cloud formations and unique variations of light that are so typical of the region).

Another project in its infancy is a series from (outside) abandoned shops and factory units - adapting a more abstract approach to the space. They are monochromatic, visually interesting and illusionistic in effect - a kind of 'trompe d'oeil' outcome. This 'trompe d'oeil also references seventeenth-century Dutch traditions - it enabled artists of the time to render objects and spaces with playful eye-fooling exactitude and raise questions about the nature of art and perception. The idea here is to respond to the empty space and propose a series of exhibitions in these spaces in October (the sponsors seem to like the idea).

But, above all, it actually makes sense that I am doing this - both the assignment brief and the space allocated. It is challenging to work within given limitations (spatial and otherwise), and still feel a certain amount of freedom to stay true to ones own artistic dispositions. These things cannot be forced. Though, having said that, I am of-loading 10 rolls of film a day, and the impulse to produce is determined and fresh right now.

In, Around and Afterthoughts (On The Photographic Impulse)

2010-04-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

My feeling, in essence, is that it makes sense to me that I should be here in Fryslan doing what Im doing at this point in my life (photographic life that is). And in a way re-assess my journey here. I was prompted to do so recently in a Dutch (again) online magazine interview ahead of my trip here. It went something like this:

"I started my relationship with photography about ten years ago. The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh once said that he ‘dabbled’ in verse and it became his life. I am similar to this: I ‘dabbled’ in photography and it became central to my life. It has become the means of getting to know the world in a new way. I feel that photography has given me a new way to comprehend life; a way of recognizing and grasping the intangible meaning in the world. There is a moment when photographing, from time to time, when there is an overriding feeling of revelation - finding a zen-like harmony with the elements of nature, the ambiguities of human life and the labors of society to organize and articulate a meaningful world. It is a difficult feeling to explain. The visible surface of the earth comes alive with ethereal sensations – full of meaning, history and contradiction. The 'act' of photographing attempts to make these sensations tangible. It (the act) encourages and permits a quiet comprehensive musing over the most seemingly banal and ordinary of things. It offers an invitation to scrutinize, to ponder, to connect with whatever piece of life it privileges."

This was a short reflection on the 'act' of photographing - the impulse to do it and the purpose of the whole enterprise. It is something I feel I really would like to express in words. Though trying to fix that experience with our primary language is impossible and maybe, to a degree, pointless. Maybe photography offers a kind of ‘inter-subjectivity’ that transcends words and other ways of knowing.

I have seldom found photographers who tackle this idea of the 'act', or the 'impulse' or the 'ritual' (to quote earlier blog posts) in a real way. There are not many significant writings which express the feeling of an artist struggling to understand and comprehend their own impulse to photograph. Perhaps my tutor in Dun Laoghaire David Farrell has, from memory, in his lectures, or in his recent blogsite writings, offered an insight. I know Jeff Wall does to a degree. I once read an interesting and insightful interview with Wolfgang Tillmanns which explored the photographic act. Similarly by the artist Phil Collins. Simililarly by Ryan McGinley. Similarly by Joel Meyorwitz. All of which have written accounts of the psychological processes of photography and all of which have produced work which has hit a tone with me. But, recently I found this affecting quote. It is by the incredible Walker Evans (the photographers photographer). Speaking in 1971, he is reflecting back to his 'American Photographs' of 1938 - which resulted from his 'subsidized freedom' (as he saw it) from the auspicies of the Farm Security Administrarion and its ideological mission and working constraints. Whats amazing about it is that towards the end of a life dedicated to photography, even Evans seems to accept that he cannot find an answer, or cannot rationalize the complexities of the photographic impulse:

"I now feel almost mystical about it. I think something was guiding me, was working through me. I really do. And, without being able to explain, I know it absolutely, that it happens sometimes, and I know by the way I feel in the action that it goes like magic - this is it.! Its as though there is a certain secret in a certain place and I can capture it. Only I can do it at this moment, only this moment and only me. You become a kind of a medium.. Some things are sort of done through you somehow. Thats a hell of a thing to believe, I believe it or I wouldnt act it!".

Notes to Self: ‘The Photo Course’ (March 2010)

2010-03-12T07:10:00.001-08:00

The Photo Course (working title) is a work on progress. I am still grappling with how to conceptualize it. I teach History and Theory of Photography and Practical studies. I suppose, this work was initially about my experience of teaching these subjects and a general interest of the environment that photography is taught in. These began with simple studies of rooms. I had started to photograph aspects of the rooms after my own lectures. Some images reference the ‘topic’ of the class I have just finished. For example, the image ‘After Pictorialism’ references the Pictorialist style, and the image ‘Chairs After Modernism’ references the modernist style. So, in effect, photographing the post-lecture environments in a style after Modernism or Pictorialism, for instance.

(What would represent this space best?) The Photo Course is positioned within a generic institutional building designed for Secondary Level education. It was built in, what looks like, the 1970s. The Course takes over (most of) the top floor of the building. The darkroom was, I hear, the room in which religion and geography were once taught (interesting, photographic theory is about a new understanding of both, I think.) There is a plastic crucifix fashioned into the ‘7’ part of the number 17 which sits, largely unnoticed, over the display panel proclaiming the word ‘Photography’. This was the center of the photographic course in its infancy (before my time) and now one of four rooms which are solely for photography and media courses. It’s a makeshift darkroom, part-time lecture room, common room for students, staff meeting room, etc. As with all rooms assigned for the photography course – it is multi-functional by necessity.

(What am I looking for?) I want to find the energetic ‘imprint’ from teaching and learning photography against the dead wood of the empty institutional environment. I want to focus on the abstract traces and markings (from myself and my students) which help to contextualize, conceptualize and realize the discourse of photographic theory and photographic history. I want to find traces of the interchange of information between my sources (photographic discourse), from myself (as the ‘mediator’ of this information) and my students (the ones who are facilitated by this information) within this building. (Note to self: Is this partly about the flow of information and ideas within an institutional building which was not designed, as such, for photography? Is it an exploration of my place within this flow and within this building?)

The project has started to become more and more self-reflexive (is it about me?) I have started to add notes, scribbles, white board markings, which have moved the history class along – as well as notes which have moved my project of teaching history along. My approach is to document, through the college year, keep records, notes, ephemera, and start to piece it together in the summer. (Note to self: ‘moving’ history along. Could even this note to self become incorporated into the project. Could an aspect of it become a project about doing a project?)

This body of work is prompted by my sense of restrictions. The energy I put into teaching others, does inevitably, restrict and limit the energy I put into my own practice. This is a massive issue for me. But, I have discovered over the last couple of years that I have an unrelenting impulse to work and think my way through large photographic projects. This has become my raison d‘etre. The ‘course’ project means that I can practice while I am at work - I can explore an idea, I can look at an environment in a different way through the medium of photography. And, in effect, explore the nature of photography in all its various manifestations through teaching and through practicing.
* * *

Sidenote: The heavy black curtain in the studio is a focal point for me. It blocks the outside (blue) light from the room where students are learning how to control and understand the principles of how indoor light works. I find an interesting mixture of both in one image. It is reminiscent of some diagram I may have seen in some generic ‘How to’ (or more appropriately ‘How Not To’) photography textbooks. I like the fact that everybody points out that the image is ‘technically’ incorrect (the carpet is yellow, etc) This is my intention.!

Sketches From Home (Random Notes - February 2010)

2010-02-27T03:06:00.000-08:00

The ‘Home’ series is a complex interplay between two identities - my sense of self and my rural background - explored through the ‘ritual’ of photography.

(“)…looking, recording, with limitations, again at the world. (“)

This is an ongoing project which has personal and emotive motivations. The word, or concept, ‘Home’ suggests a direction, a place, an origin and a longing to return. In essence this is about the relationship between myself and my background - my sense of self, my memories of home and my search to find my place within it at this point of my life. In the images, there is also a direct relationship between my role as a photographer and my rural background - a delicate and uncomfortable balancing-act between belonging and disassociation. I find myself longing to connect, or reconnect, to the place or with the landscape. Yet, the overriding impression or feeling is one of ‘distance’.

“… living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.”
Seamus Heaney ‘Digging’

Just making my way through Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney. Interesting to note that one of its poems ‘Digging’ is firmly rooted in the type of environment I am trying to deal with. Heaney is trying to grasp, or ‘dig’ into, the real psychological conditions of rural life – to fully comprehend the contradictory impulses and feelings of ambivalence towards his rural origins. The poet does not, of course, physically dig with a shovel or spade, he digs with his pen, into his memories - extracting really visceral words about his fathers' world and his disconnection from it. THese are vivid evocations of rural life, yet it is a setting that he has possibly left behind and one which is slowly fading into memory (note to self: take note of the sense of fading memory in the 'white' triptych). In ‘Digging’ there is a definite balance between feelings of ambition (artistic, or otherwise), and a possible lingering sense of guilt in breaking inherited traditions (of farming). Heaney has chosen the poet’s pen over his father’s spade - the ‘heaven of education’ over ‘the earth of farm labour.’ I find myself easily identifying with the poets position. I want to explore the ‘real’ conditions of my own relationship to rural life. To explore the sense of guilt, of fear, of love, of hatred; to go beyond elemental feelings, beyond any sense of nostalgia and pathos; to find something that feels real to me about the connection and disconnection to what, on the outside, may seem like conflicting identities. I want to bring two worlds I know together, to bring two separate impulses together, and find a broader understanding of my sense of self.
The camera is an ever-attendant associate to my own experiences. It has come to occupy the role of mediator between, for instance, the landscape and my psychological identification with it, between, for instance, my past and my psychological relationship with it. I find myself in a constant search for personal meaning – an identity and a place, and ways to communicate that meaning; even if I am unsure of why I want to do this through the photographic ritual. (What type of photographer am I? ) I am no doubt a mutable creature behind (or in front of) the lens. I adapt my approach to suit the topic or subject matter. I acclimatize to different environments and engage in a constant revision and analysis of my own work. I like to fully conceptualize any project I take on - even if this process takes years to complete. I am interested in exploring the nature of photography in its many different manifestations and find something which challenges me to face the complexities and density of the photographic practice. I like to create work that will maybe challenge the viewer to reconsider the act of photography itself - to see through (my own) aesthetic limitations and maybe feel an identification with the world I know through the images I produce. I strive for a kind of ‘inter-subjectivity’ that transcends words and other ways of knowing.

To see more of the 'Home' Project: http://www.martincreggphotography.com

'Suspended State' (Field Notes Feb 2010)

2010-02-18T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is my first field-trip since October into the heart of the ‘Suspended State’ – the Midlands - an area I have visited and re-visited throughout the economic, social and organic ‘cycles’ of the last few years.

It is interesting that the term cycles should become appropriate for the re-start of the work, as well as part of the overall and inclusive rhetoric of this particular photographic enterprise. While the underlying context to the work is economic, social and historical (referencing the ‘cycles’ of each); it has also come to signify the eternal cycle of construction and destruction - depicting the inevitable organic cycles which are disrupted by society and then return. The cycle is also seasonal. Today it is spring, it feels like spring, and it is another beginning for me with this work.

The cyclical element to the subject I am photographing has been manifest throughout - from as early as 2004, when I started to look at the landscape with a critical eye. The type of (or method of) landscape work I have undertaken is largely determined by the seasons – the ‘correct’ light is seasonal, the necessary barren and austere look of the landscape is best reflected when it is dry (seasonal). But, I also have to fit this work into the relentless melt that is ‘teacher-time’ – so, determined not only by seasonal and organic time but by the calculated measurements of the academic calendar. But, in many ways, returning at definite points throughout the year(s) can add another dimension to how I look at and conceptualize the landscape – I feel the sense of time and change - or lack of change.

Today, in the terrain vague of Mullingar, all cycles are motionless. This place I have known since it had a definite use-value. It was agricultural land - just far enough away from Mullingar town to give it the colloquial identity of being ‘countryside’. Yet, this place has become just another testament to the years of misplaced desires - bad policy, bad planning and vested interests. It is yet another abandoned and desolate nothing-land – a dumping ground of relinquished pursuits. Here even nature seems uncertain whether it is indebted to once again battle its way to the surface.

The landscape is not only in a state of abandonment, it feels dislocated and discontinuous from both nature and society, from both time and meaning. It has an overriding feeling of ‘aftermath’ about it - like how it must have felt for photographers drifting through Dresden and Nagasaki after the horrors of war, contemplating the intentions and meaning of what had come before. Yet, this, thankfully, is not a post-war landscape, it is not scorched earth (in that sense), but, as I survey the lifeless ground like the lonely figure from Beckett’s post-apocalyptic ‘Happy Days’, I cannot help but feel like this. I find myself desperately trying to establish meaning and purpose to even my own act. But that voice somewhere in the back of my mind is relentless - (")I need to photograph this!(") This state of mind will, today, determine my approach - whether I like it or not.

Sidenote: Listening to a Newstalk debate, as I drive towards Longford, about the recession and the best option for recovery. A Fine Geal TD uses the word “apocalypse” to describe the “state of mind” of the country.

A Pair of Boots (2009)

2010-02-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

This image – ‘Pair of Boots’ (2008) was taken on as part of an inventory of objects around my fathers concrete workshop; where he has worked with his brother for more than fifty years. It is a very personal image, which contrasts, and symbolically brings together, the world of my work – as a photographer, artist and scholar of Art history; and my background with my fathers world of work and my time working with him there. It references a famous 1887 painting by Vincent Van Gogh, which is often cited to refer to the pre-modern world of struggle and suffering - the everyday objects of workers labouring with the soil.

In relation to this painting, Fredrick Jameson suggested that through the work of art, reality is drawn into a revelation which is unavailable in the everyday world. The 'audience' (in the context of the time of the painting) is brought into contact with the everyday world of the worker. This exchange relationship opens the object of work to an extraordinary freedom - artist and audience can separately, privately and individually meet and identify with the significance of the object, in a society where this identification woud be otherwise unavailable (Jameson, 1991).

The image also takes note of a famous Walker Evans image from the American depression in the 1930s - 'Floyd Burroughs Shoes', with which Jamesons comments are also apposite. (A copy of Evans' image has been hanging above desk for more that three years. For me its far more than just 'canonical' it represents the valuable essence of the photographic medium).

Wellington 2005

2010-01-31T01:21:00.000-08:00

Burma - 2005

2010-01-29T05:34:00.001-08:00

Work on Perspective (2009)

2010-01-29T05:22:00.000-08:00

This is an idea I have been playing around with for a few years. It references the act of looking. I try to find banal spaces and create a sense of perspective within the photographic plain. Initially it came from an idea to confront the viewer with a latent-triangle-effect - a not-so-evident trianglulation of colours or objects inside the composition which draw the viewer into the image. Below is a sample of this approach.

After Hopper (2006)

2010-01-29T05:18:00.000-08:00

This image is one of a series I was toying around with in 2006. The work referenced the paintings of Edward Hopper.

Phnom Penh (2005)

2010-01-29T05:17:00.000-08:00

Phnom Penh is a city that, on the surface, appears to conceal the underlying malevolence of its recent history. The bloody legacy of the 1970s is evident throughout Phnom Penh in the form of torture chambers, scorched earth and impoverished architecture; as well as scatterings of concealed landmines and numerous mass graves. While the city itself can appear to function as any city in South East Asia, these episodes of recent history have left its scars on the city, its people and its landscape.

I initially visited Phnom Penh to pursue my interest in photographing the outskirts of urban space or what is known as 'the terrain vague', yet it became a piece that responds to the sense of landscape and memory in Cambodia. I photographed the route from the city to what has become known as the 'killing fields'. The project works in three ways; firstly as a documentation of the visible traces of conflict on the landscape and the city's topography. Secondly, as a project that reacts to that search for layers of history and cultures within Phnom Penh. Thirdly, I endeavoured to get beneath the surface of the city's appearance; to reveal an insight into ordinary life and its relationship to a malevolent past.

I initially concentrated on certain markings left around the city, on the walls of the area around the S-41 prison in the centre of Phnom Penh. These markings in the image, reference Sanskrit; the ancient art of storytelling - prevalent in ancient Khymer culture. Can the markings tell us anything about what happened here? The abandoned fields surrounding Phnom Penh are littered with scarred trees which, although may or may not be as a result of direct violence, can convey a sense of place and respond to the sense of violence that the history of the landscape possesses.

I have also tried to expose layers of history; one image offers a porthole through rusting, metal barriers covering a decadent French colonial house. As with most of the images, there is something in the line of vision, elements within the image that refuse the entire picture.

June 25th

2010-01-29T05:16:00.000-08:00

I hope that my handful of readers will excuse the emotional side-note to the development of my photographic work. But today is a very special and significant day in my life. I first met Fiona Kelliher on the 25th of June 1999 (around the same time that I bought my first SLR camera). Today at mid-day, eleven years later, we are getting married in the beautiful surroundings of UCC in Cork City.

Photo Rencontres Aarles

2009-07-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.galleryofphotography.ie/exhibitions/arles09.html

Martin Cregg 'Midlands' in F-Stop Magazine (Issue #35)

2009-06-02T03:52:00.001-07:00

A selection of the Midlands project has appeared in the international photography magazine F-Stop.

www.fstopmagazine.com/

'Midlands' Book Now Available

2009-06-02T03:46:00.000-07:00

'Midlands' book is now available at The Gallery of Photography, Dublin (May 2009)

http://www.galleryofphotography.ie/

'Midlands': A Topographical Exploration of the Irish Midlands @ Photospace, Wellington, NZ (May 2009)

2009-04-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

‘Midlands’: A Topographical Exploration of the Irish Midlands

Midlands is a project by Irish Documentary Photographer Martin Cregg, which charts the construction of the Irish midlands region from the height of the Irish economic boom in the early part of the decade, to the economic insecurities and uncertainties of recession times. The work was first shown at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin in June 2008 – the very week the Irish government made its downbeat proclamation of the harder times which lay ahead.

The work focuses on the concept of what the concept of ‘The Midlands’ is in its essence – non-defined, non-geographic, non-place. It charts the confident thrust of building activity which was undertaken in the region at the height of what we have come to know as the ‘Celtic Tiger’ - housing estates, commercial parks, etc - creations of government tax incentives which, it was anticipated, would lead to a dynamic transformation in the region itself, generating business and providing homes which would lay claim to community. This dream however has not materialised. In the rural mid-land areas of Co. Roscommon, Co. Longford and Co. Westmeath, the factories which promised to hum with productivity now lay dormant, the houses which promised security lay helplessly unoccupied. In the context of recession, these structures are stripped of the aura of hope they once had - laying bare a certain reality of the unstable nature of the country’s current economic situation.

“The Midlands is a grey area – a non-specified geographical entity, under constant construction and re-definition. For me, ‘The Midlands’ is more a concept than an actual place. It connotes a new commercial campaign – an appeal for industry and identity. The framework has been laid down, but is largely dormant – it’s factories solicit the hum of productivity; its empty estates seek claim to community.” - Martin Cregg

"Poignant images from a region apart. Cregg's impeccably made topographic views document an evolving environment reflecting the urbanization of the Irish rural landscape. But the change is more the result of calculated planning than a natural progression: that, at any rate, is one plausible interpretation of his studies of housing and industrial estates built on a speculative basis, based on the hope or presumption that, once they are there, businesses and people will follow. The idea of taming the landscape recurs. Unruly organic growth is systematically suppressed and replaced by a range of hard, unsympathetic materials, including impermeable membranes, concrete, blocks and bricks. Cregg doesn't comment, he documents, but it is hard to look at the evidence without feeling that the quality of the environment we are creating is fundamentally bad." - Aiden Dunne, Irish Times

"Martin Cregg has provided a superb visual testimonial to the 'wilderness' of suburbia." - Eamonn Slater, NUIM

Process: Martin Cregg in 'The Exposure Project'

2009-04-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Martin Cregg's series Process explores the shift from analog to digital technology in photographic practice. As he declares in his statement:

"I began collecting these 'end of the role' objects – abstract artefacts, twin-checks, unused and discarded remains of the analogue process itself – but nevertheless a integral part of it. They are abstract, yet familiar. Sometimes, by accident, they will appear amongst 'customers' everyday photos and index prints, which are inadvertently handed back from a photo-lab to the public – numbered 00, 00A, 37A, etc, etc. I began to scan these from the discarded film negative clippings at a high resolution, inflating these objects to print size. I have collected over 100 - each unique, diverse and intrinsic to the nature of a disappearing analogue photographic landscape. Even the photographic term of reference – 'process' itself, something which is invariably linked with analogue methods, will also disappear."

See this work in 'The Exposure Project':

http://theexposureproject.blogspot.com/search?q=martin+cregg