FEATURED ARTIST Trevor Aston
I am a fraud. That would be my ‘artist’s statement’. Because I’m not an artist – I don’t create art, I craft. I do it with passion, devotion, exploration, absorption, certainly with expression, perhaps with love. But I see no art in it. In fact, I see little art in any photography. Not compared to what I see, or feel when I stand in front of a Van Gogh. It might be me who’s at fault – my failure to see the art in photography, not the failure of photography to ever embody art.
I can see acute social observation and reflection in the photography of Martin Parr and Tony Ray Jones before him and I like the work of Gregory Crewdson, not pretty so it must be art. There are many photographers whose work I admire and aspire to, but I’m not sure it’s art.
I joined the Richmond Art Society because I wanted to exhibit. I’ve sold several prints from the browsers and a large block mounted prints of ‘Boys in the Mud’. Now, my photographic interests have moved away landscape to people. The camera is the best way to take a likeness, it can capture the fraction of a moment when someone switches between masks and fleetingly reveals themselves. Sorry painters, I know you think the length of time you spend with a subject in a sitting enables you to get to know them, and that’s rendered in the depiction on canvas. Or is it just boredom on their face? I’ll take a landscape painting over a landscape photograph any day – I never want to see a long exposure photograph of a waterfall ever again. The Richmond Art Society’s exhibitions always include so many beautiful landscape paintings, they make me want to paint, not photograph.
I bought my first camera in 1972. My newspaper round earned enough for one 36 exposure roll of slide film per month. I made every shot count. Looking back, I see a desire to photograph people, but a lack of confidence. Mostly, my pictures were what my mother called ‘views’. I photographed my children as they grew up and sometimes commented that I should have been a photographer. I had a career with the BBC, producing, writing and directing at different times, but when that ended I looked at my camera and saw a tool to make a living. Finally, I was able to photograph people, a subject endlessly varied and I find profoundly fascinating.
You can see more of my work on my website.

Previous Featured Artists
John Iddon
Jude Wild
Caroline Sayer
Peter Swann
Jim Woodman
Catherine Ball
Trevor Aston
John Brigden
Angela Kilenyi
Sue Ribbans