The Fine Art Photography of Ian Talbot

"I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects."

Jan Sudek

The Objectivity Series

The images in the Objectivity series celebrate and explore the secret life of inanimate objects. In German they would be termed "still-stehende sache", "things standing still", in French "nature reposée", "things at rest". Such terms imply that these objects, once in motion, have merely paused to present themselves to the camera. Even so we may call them "inanimate" objects but equally "still life", hinting at a secret existence beyond our view.

The valuable and the valueless, prized possessions and detritus equally jostle for attention. Here we can gaze at the overlooked and make no judgement as to their worth. Each object asserts the fact of it's being and says "Here I am and this is how I look photographed".

What invisible quality qualified them for selection? Why this object and not that? Was it just for their "look"? Is there really no more than meets the eye?

Still nothing in a photograph is itself. A pipe is forever not a pipe. These objects have become merely shadows, an arrangement of light and dark on a surface.

The rest is silence.

"A photograph is worth a thousand words - but which thousand words?"

Anonymous

About The Words Series

The Household Encyclopaedia was first published in 1931. Found in many humble homes in the years preceding World War II, this particular copy belonged to my Grandmother. I have no idea if she either consulted it regularly or indeed at all. But this all has little or no relevance to these photographs.

Unable to read them literally how do you read them as images?

Words drift into and out of your field of vision. Cut adrift from context they lose all meaning. And yet the eye is inevitably drawn to them as they exert the mysterious attraction that all words have. Does the eye still yearn to fill in the gaps? To make some sense of half seen phrases?

No matter the missing words you seek would hold little meaning or importance to you today. Still you may seek after them. For what? Information? Most would be irrelevant, some possibly dangerous.

And that only leaves curiosity. Curiosity that can never be satisfied.

"The photographic image is a message without a code."

Roland Barthes

About The Style Guide Series

If you took the title of this series literally how would you view these images? Would they seem pretentious? How would that view change if you thought it was meant to be ironic?

Giorgio Armani has said that the difference between fashion and style is quality. You could take the labels in these images as a guarantee of quality and an expression of style. And yet, for the most part, many of these labels are not immediately visible on the articles of clothing etc. when worn. The label on the sole of a pair of Gucci shoes would be rarely visible, the one inside the shoe totally invisible when actually worn on the foot. Would the perceived quality be self evident anyway?

How differently would you feel wearing, say, a Dolce & Gabbana garment rather than one purchased at Primark or WalMart? Would you assume a more confident demeanour that no-one could fail to notice? People say that first impressions count - does that mean those who can afford a designer label will always have an edge, a perceived advantage?

Would you be impressed?

And yet these images remain essentially mute and can answer none of these questions.

About The Order of Things

A log of my experiments, works-in-progress, blind alleys I sometimes slip down and the snippets of thinking that both precede and run concurrently with them.