Flat Lighting.
I was fortunate to discover a John Myers exhibition on in Dublin last weekend. His work is widely available to see online but it is so refreshing to see prints!
Anyway, having not had chance to pre read prior to the visit I was left to draw my own conclusions. When I returned home I found this link where John Myers explains the exhibition and brings something interesting to the table. At first it is easy to dismiss the images as bland, flat and uninteresting but that is the point.
The exhibition explores images taken in the mid 1970’s (when I was born) that were never meant for exhibition and were taken for the sheer enjoyment and personal exploration while he skills as a new photographer. This freedom in itself is the key to indulging and risk taking as a new photographer in my opinion.
Every image made use of flat lighting and I was curious as to why. The whole point of the exhibition was about normal people in suburbia coming to terms with living that life in amongst bland concrete and 1970’s fabrics! (I felt it was a shame all the images were in black and white.)
I had my Mum, Aunt and younger cousin with me. It was very interesting to see their reaction to the images being that they are not photographers. They were unsure as to why the John Myers took images of what he did but they were so glad he did. It was a time that my mum, aunt and I remembered but my cousin didn’t. It stimulated conversations and memories of an era that seemed so modern at the time but now none of us are sure how we survived.
This was a remarkable collection of the unremarkable where you realise that every apparent snap is actually a carefully considered frame.
Getting back to lighting this exhibition was proof enough to me that flat lighting has it’s place as a creative tool.
John Myers lecture for this exhibition can be seen here.
