invited guest: Alan Wilson
I’m an amateur in the true meaning of the word and when not at my ‘real’ job I can usually be found walking the streets of Edinburgh, where I’ve lived for this past 30 years ago (I’m originally from Londonderry in Northern Ireland).
What I do is not so much photography its more like escapology, an escape into a space of my own making where I can ‘stare, pry, listen’ as Walker Evans advised.
There are many photographers I admire, known and not so well known, street and non-street, and I often look at their work and think to myself, “that’s how I’d like to take photographs”, small, perfect little packages of meaning and thought. But then when I’m walking down the street the reality kicks in and I realise that I am what I am, a ‘straight photographer’, simply recording what unfolds before me.
And that’s how it was up to the beginning of 2007 when I’ve moved away from black & white film for various reasons and began to take a few tentative steps with colour and a whole new set of influences opened up before me. Photography just gets more complicated.
Pictures and text by photographer: Alan Wilson
check out the site www.streetphoto.fsnet.co.uk
/invited by Ulf Fågelhammar