Friday 3 December 2010

Conurbate Capitulate

The world we inhabit is a maze; a series of metaphorical, physical and emotional obstacles we’re forever navigating in order to streamline our way through life. A journey peppered with pitfalls, obstructions and traps, wherein our ability to overcome each thing thrown in our path become the basis of life itself. A wrong turn; a false start; a missed exit; and we’re thrown into turmoil, desperate to find our way back to our original path.

In Conurbate Capitulate the subject navigates his way through the debris of the metropolis, grappling with the municipal hindrances he’s presented with. Each step of the journey is its own encapsulated attempt to overcome the impediments of urban distopia. Without inception or destination this presented journey becomes a never-ending visual comment on the infinite restrictions we must endure to survive—our innate need to stay afloat in a submersive culture of detractions.

The photographs here depict moments slanted beyond the confines of natural gravity and yet surrendering implicitly to them. A brick wall floor and a tarmac sky frame our upturned protagonist, literally reflecting the disorder and upheaval of everyday life. Our explorer should fall, gravity dictates that, but he doesn’t fall towards the ground—a battle with gravity itself is fought, won and simultaneously lost as the subject navigates his way through the cornucopia of debris in the modern city.



Tuesday 14 September 2010

Friday 9 October 2009

It's Nice That.




“Performance Photography isn’t a category we’ve ever found a need for
on the blog, but if there’s many more creatives out there like Raven Smith,
we might have to. A great set of staged, not stale pictures that for
some reason feel apt to post on a Friday.”







.

Thursday 10 September 2009

HotShoe Award.


“Like a new wave, post-punk, Marcel Marceau, Smith’s prevailing black humour invites a shared empathy for the human condition."

"Offering a tragicomic moment caught somewhere between a scene from Tom and Jerry and Samuel Beckett.”

“All of the images contain a strange sonic potentiality, evoking an eerie world beyond language."

"The more compelling work operates on a different level; one that is troubling, unfamiliar, far less easily explained, and in this way mirrors life and all it’s complexities.”



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And I...

Henry IIV And I


John And I


Franklin, Winston And I


William And I


Henry And I


London, 2009.