Donovan Rees [Beyond Words]
What inspires me. The people I love in perfect light. Moody weather, dirty but honest places, incongruities, the beauties of analogue photography and the alchemy of hand-development. Other people’s work also, to revel in without replicating it.
My style. Do I have one? Perhaps I’m too close to see it. I prefer to let each situation or subject speak for itself and I’m ready and happy to transform my ‘style’ to suit. I get excited about achieving a technically perfect photo, and then just as excited about something dark, blurry and covered in dust.
What are my influences? There’s an ever-increasing list of photographers whose work I admire, in all sorts of conflicting genres, though I doubt if one could trace them in my own work: Edward Burtynsky, Olaf Otto Becker, Sebastiao Salgado, Nick Brandt, Cartier-Bresson, Steve McCurry, Ken Kitano …
How did I get into photography? A very good baptism of fire: a Nikkormat without a functioning light meter and a single manual focus 85mm lens, which I took on my travels to Peru in 1998. And my second birth came with a Contax G2 about five years ago, since when I’ve progressed quite
restlessly through various cameras and formats, and will continue to do so.
What does photography mean to me? I’m honestly not sure. It is in part a conscious mode of communication, in part just a gut reaction. I do not feel the need to photograph a scene to remember it, and I do not have a problem with the dishonesty of an image that feigns a mood not present in reality. A photograph must for me be both more than just beautiful and more than just real. It must be something beyond either - more than any other art form photography has the power to hit directly behind the eyes and chest, but there should be space for second thoughts, for complicated emotions that follow the initial reaction.
