Spent much of the last couple of days preparing various images for my next album 'That Old Mysterioso', which I'm planning to make the next release after 'Songs For Ghosts.'
I've sent several photographs to Martin Bostock who will be dealing with the general layout and typography of the album. The photo's I've taken of myself are heavily treated and have an intensely graphic effect. I'm wearing various masks for the pictures, most of them strange or weirdly disturbing.
Here's one, (which I may not use for the album package,) which shows me wearing a Devil mask. I've treated it in such a way as to give it a rough painterly look.
If this was blown up bigger and printed on canvas I think it would make a nice art piece. Even better, printed on steel or aluminium.
Digital technology brings so many possibilities to the table but the trick is to sift through all those possibilities to arrive at something which speaks with strength and meaning. Or, maybe, no meaning at all...
In the 21st Century it's no longer 'technique' that counts, but CHOICES. Technique is easy come by for anyone with a computer and appropriate software, but individual vision still wins the day with decision making forming the new artistic sensibility.
\What you choose to put out there is what you will be judged on, rightly or wrongly. And your choices can make statements or no statements at all. I like to leave the statements to others, their personal interpretation of what appears before them.
I rarely have an interpretation, just a viceral reaction to an image's visual impact. It's often many months after, that the penny finally drops and I get an inkling about what I was trying to say.
But, in the end, it doesn't matter. The image is everything.