Les Mains

These photos were taken over the course of the last few months during walks with Richard around London and I'm only showing them now as a few will be illustrating the forthcoming talk at DeMontfort, with Richard and Lala Meredith-Vula. There's something filmic about them, a meta-language of the observer observed, what is it to look, to notice, how are these things brought together, what is it to take a photograph, in effect what is it to see. I thoroughly agree with Luigi Ghirri, that the most important thing is to see clearly, and being with Richard over these months is to be with someone who naturally sees the world, with a constant curiosity, and whose eye is also highly informed, about material, process and provenance, attached to which is the natural theatre of everyday life, and in Richard's words, "The world does the work", so if one has the eyes to see in this clear state then it's all there, all the irony and humour, and all the absurdity too. Every day when we take a walk we are witnesses to this unfolding canvas around us, as if in a long calligraphic Chinese scroll, telling a story with each passing step, and we make choices all the time, when to stop, when to go. Robert Adams was once asked how he chose the locations for his photographs, and he said, "It just depends where you stop."