In my project Signs and Wonders, I play with different kinds of signs we may encounter everyday. There is so much signage in our towns and cities we generally take them for granted but when I turned my gaze upon them, a walk around my neighborhood became redolent with creative possibilities.
Whether they are the street name of an ancient philospher just a few streets away from me, the “goodbye” sign I see every week driving out of my local supermarket, or a “SLOW” sign in a cemetery – I alter them to change or extend their meaning by the use of camera perspective and graffiti. For me it is like street poetry and every sign I encounter has hidden potential and all I have to do is try to tease it out.
The initial idea began with the concept of sticking my pictures on posts and rephotographing them. My first attempt was shooting the path behind a tree and then sticking the image on the front of the tree, very soon I realised I did not have to be confined by using a photograph within a photograph and came to see I could use paint chalk or anything that came to hand to create meaning.
The creative use of perspective is not new to me as I have used it many times over the years, whether it is photographing women’s legs or men’s fashion on a hill. It is something I visit periodically over the years and on the lookout for my second image, I realised I could use it again but in a different way. [Official Website]
