Realityaversion is a concept that’s been rattling around my head for a while. I use photography to represent a view of the world and to escape it: two ideas that are very much related; two aspects of finding oneself in a world that is oppressively complex at every level. By showing my version of reality, I might perhaps explain my aversion to it.

Sometimes I make images that represent one of these concepts more than the other: with landscapes I tend to record primarily a certain view of the world, whereas abstracts predominantly represent dissociation from reality.

Other times, I make images which incorporate both. This tends to happen most strongly in my reflected composites, where separate views on two sides of a pane of glass come together in a composite image that both represents an insight into complexity and a new reality that emerges from it.

In a way this is a metaphor for the inside and the outside of my head: two related but very different worlds, somewhat at odds to each other and combining in a scene of confusion and surreality.

Often there is another facet to the images, which is ambiguity. Unlike painting and drawing, where one chooses what to include, photography is a process of choosing what to exclude. That exclusion is important: the absence of detail in an image inevitably causes us to replace it by borrowing from our memory and imagination. When viewing image, the more we feel compelled to contribute ourselves to that viewing experience, the more invested we are in it. We can build a more personal relationship with an image if part of ourself forms part of our perception of it.

By the end of 2024 I had come to understand these things and put them into practice, and at that point started to produce images that combined that perspective of complexity, an escapist alternative reality, and the ambiguity that invites the viewer in.

For me, the most successful combination of those things so far is in the following image from the last few days of 2024, where numerous disparate elements, many reflected and others not, come together with enough ambiguity to invite a unique narrative from any viewer who cares to be drawn in.

And thus, as we enter 2025, this is the starting point of Realityaversion and my yardstick for whatever follows.

We shall see where it leads.