The Unlikely Influence of a Mail-Order Catalogue
Many years ago, long before I could actually call myself a photographer, a friend and I decided we needed to lose some money one Christmas, so we opened up a posters shop in Cork City. Movie posters were big at the time and we decided this was the way to go. Long before the internet and online shopping, our only source for these posters was mail-order catalogues. Luckily we managed to get our hands on a couple of these, and little did I know at the time that one of them would become very influential on my future work.
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This one particular catalogue was more like a book with endless pages of beautiful posters, and not only of great movies, but also of works of art by both famous and obscure artists. And there were pages of photographic posters by names that I greatly admired: Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and Ansel Adams. These posters had a natural white border of different proportions – an influence and style that has stayed with me over the years.
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I realise that all art and design is subjective and people may have different opinions, but I've seen so many good photographs poorly represented by bad presentation and framing (and I include a lot of my early work in this). For me, personally, sitting an image within a well-proportioned border to give it room to breathe, and also not letting it become crowded by an overbearing frame, is just as important as any other element of a photograph.
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Many years after our short-lived poster shop closed its doors (about a week after Christmas!), I was still using that catalogue as inspiration, and while the catalogue has been lost over time, its pages still turn in my head and I consider it to still be a major influence on my style and success.
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All my prints are embossed and the frames are made of solid wood.
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