I was born just after the Second World War and my first playgrounds were undeveloped bombsites. When I was four, I would walk a couple of miles/kilometres to a normally waterlogged field, where as often as not there would be a group of “kids” playing soccer. The older kids would divide us into teams – which I must admit were fair. They would referee the games and settle disputes among the tiny tots. I don’t remember fights breaking out. All I remember was that I was happy and had a lot of fun. I also was one of those kids who would focus on the tiny clump of daisies on an island somewhere on the field.

I guess in art or photography that first paragraph was my frame. A frame of what was the start of my life. O.K. what does this to do with my version of photography? My innocent eyes were able to see a future after a war that had destroyed so much. If I had had a camera then, I would have taken a photograph of the daisies showing through a background of destruction.

My first experience with a camera was when my parents took me to the steeple chase. The horses, the jumps, again the mud, the bookies, and a “bunch of horses” tearing around a track. I was given a Brownie 127 and I was told that if I clicked on the camera. I would get a picture. I wasn’t told about a film, or that my parents would have to get the film developed, which they didn’t, until I developed the film many years later. Memories would come flooding back, but that was the story of my first camera.

My next camera, a bakelite, also had black and white film, but at this point, my world changed. My mind was now converting the black and white photos into the actual colour of the scene. I marveled at the greens of the grass and the blues of the sky and the vibrant reds, pinks, blues, and whites of the flowers. To this day green and blue remain my favourite colours. In those days I was an eternal optimist, I could always see the colour of nature in everything and I came to appreciate that what nature gives is hope!

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My little camera followed me to Grammar School (High School) where I learned how to develop film in a dark room and I noticed how nature provided us with colour, patterns, contrasts, and shapes.

In my journeys around the world my two Pentax cameras introduced me to the wonders of architecture, especially the castles and other historical buildings of England, France, and Germany. I took photographs in the Poland of communism. It was there that I was told that I could only take pictures of what the government would allow. Certain angles of buildings could get you into trouble. I learned quickly that I could only take pictures of family and what the state said was good. Bad things never happened there.

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With that brief history, you can see that my photographs show the passage of time in the world. That is why I love the Ranche and its journey back into history! 

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