45
B+WLeft This is just a small selection of
the rock details I shot on Pentewan
Sands early one morning. However,
it is not the quantity or even the
quality of the images that mattered
most, but the catharsis of the
picture-taking process.birds create nests because
they found eggs don’t balance
particularly well on branches;
prehistoric people created early
fashions to avoid chilled nether
regions; and someone worked out
that heating a paste of flour and
eggs created something tastier
than the sum of its parts.
But when it comes to creating
art, the reasons behind the
creative drive become more
opaque. We still do not know- and will never know for
certain – why, 64,000 years
ago, a Neanderthal decided
to make a red handprint on
a cave wall in Spain. Yet as a
species we have very deliberately
continued this ancient tradition
of parietal art, decorating our
walls with a range of mediums,
including photographs. But as
photographers, what is it that
drives us to invest so much
energy into producing the
purposeless artefacts?
L
et me give you an example. I
went on holiday to Cornwall
(Pentewan Sands if you must
know), and one morning
I set my alarm to get up before
the rest of the campsite and
head down to the beach. My sole
purpose was to photograph the
rounded boulders at the eastern
end of the sands and for an hour
or more I explored those rocks
with my lens, taking close-up shot
after close-up shot of their cracks,
ridges and quartz veins.
But why? It certainly wasn’t
to produce some revelatory
body of work in the Victorian
photographic tradition that
would educate and entertain.
I wasn’t going to return from
my expedition like a pioneering
photographer coming back from
Africa and Asia, with images of
pyramids, elephants and native
peoples that would solicit gasps
of wonderment – rocks don’t
have the same exoticism.