BeckiGroves

I take what my father calls 'Elevator Photography'. Much like elevator music, my pictures are often of the sort that might be found on a hotel room wall, or in a café, or maybe a government office. They are of nothing in particular, to be looked at by no one in particular. Since I brought my first camera, an old film camera that was stubborn and only worked when it felt like it, when I was 7 at a village fête, I have loved taking pictures of strange, abstract things. The first photo that I ever took was of the bark of a silver birch tree. My parents brought me a fujifilm compact digital camera for my ninth birthday, and with that I started photographing everything, from my feet (and other people's) to a piece of chalk sat on the ledge of the blackboard besides the dartboard at the local pub, all because I was not restrained by the limitation of a reel of film having only 24 images. And from there my photography has, on good days at least, improved. I like rust. Rust and splintered wood. Oh, and peeling paint. They are my favourite subjects to photograph. They have so much texture, so much colour. I love the way that a rusty piece of iron can look so frail, so fragile, and yet it can still be so sturdy and rigid. I like that oxymoron. I like old things, too. Anything that looks worn, battered and damaged, even broken beyond repair. I also like candid photos of people, when they look natural and 'real'. I like to see the raw emotion in those images. The emotions that they can then project.