The preparatory assignment for Phonar was described as follows:
Garner a portfolio of 8-10 images from different photographers whose work inspires you. Choose carefully, as though your edit was going to appear as a spread in a printed magazine, you may choose to lay them out as such if you wish, with attention to scale, pace and flow etc.
The portfolio must directly address a theme of your choosing – it could be a personal theme or a topical one, the choice is yours.
My response was to panic. I thought that I would struggle to name any photographers at all and definitely could not list several favourites. I do own a book of Ansel Adams photographs that I think was published to celebrate 100 years since his birth so I hit up Google images to grab a few of my favourites. Of course all of his work is black and white so I then focussed in on a gritty selection of street photography by my good friend Ste Jones of Bismarck and Herring. The common theme was one I named “Human Absence” and that reflected a theme in my photography which is that I tend to prefer landscapes and objects to humans when choosing subject matter. A bit of further research turned up Richard Misrach as an artist who captures strongly evocative images of very desolate areas. This then is my first set of images:
