My Wish You Were Here series aims to challenge the viewers’ attention in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of whimsy and surrealism. Like Rene Magritte, and Lee Friedlander, I want to make the familiar seem a little strange, but without Photoshop and image manipulation. These photos come about through observation, using juxtaposition, reflection, typography, and scale.
This project has been ongoing for several years now, and also have a black and white series called Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming. As 2020 has been such a strange and unusual year, I thought these 2020 photos, since the start of the pandemic, may be appropriate for the times.
Here is the introduction to the book, self published in 2018: “When I was a teenage boy in the mid-Seventies, living in rural Nova Scotia, I spent hours studying the album covers created by Hipgnosis, the London-based design group. This was before I grew interested in photography, but, as LPs like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or “Ummagumma” played on the turntable, I scrutinized the covers, trying to penetrate the mysteries of the evocative, layered visual compositions. My “Wish You Were Here” is an ongoing photographic project that’s been in the works for several years. I aim to capture images that have a sense of the surreal yet are readily seen in everyday life. Additionally, I try to capture the sense of whimsy and humour that I liked about those album covers. The images come about through observation, rather than with Photoshop or other manipulations. For me, that’s an important aspect of the project–there’s no manipulation of the image. Reflections, juxtaposition, and scale all come into play.”
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Super!
Thank you, Robert!