marcus doyle 9/7/23 marcus doyle 9/7/23

A world without color and the magic of Monochrome..

Much of my time as a teenager was spent in my bedroom- which had been turned into a darkroom- trying to perfect the art of the black and white print. Considered by some as a strange teenage lad, I would spend the days under a makeshift safe light, an empty red Brylcreem pot with a bulb shoved into it. Shutting myself away for days on end the smell of fixer never quite left. The enlarger, a fabulous construction made up of a large baked bean tin and half a tripod served me well and was even used later to make contact prints when I opened a commercial darkroom in North London in the 90’s.

It wasn’t until a few years ago I returned to black and white photography, a combination of finding my old leica (and getting it fixed) and a trip along Route 66 from San Francisco to Chicago (both images here were made with the same camera). I soon realized the joy of monochrome never really went away, it just lay dormant for a while while the photography world panicked over digital.

Seeing the images appear as they do in a tray of developer is still a magical moment for me and I often find myself venturing out with that old camera loaded with black and white film.

marcus doyle 9/6/23 marcus doyle 9/6/23

Notes on favorite photographs.

Photographers always get asked if they have a favorite photograph. As commonplace as this may seem, its always been an odd thing for me and a bit like asking someone who’s your favorite child, or actor. But for photographers and artists the answer is not a simple one. Often it depends on what mood you're in, or what you are working on at the time. The image above is a good example of my current favorite image. It has nothing to do with the slightly moody sky, or the rule of thirds, or even the visual appeal of the image, which although nice is not a breath taking low angle super dooper dramatic scene. This particular image is all to do with that gnarly tree; When I was a boy I would go for long walks with my father and our dog. We would always stop at ‘My Tree’ where I would climb up the knotty branches and dangle like a monkey while our dog run around chasing rabbits. I never questioned the fact that the tree stood alone in a field and was over 700 years old. After the death of my father I made a special trip to ‘My Tree’ and made this image. It was probably one of the most emotional moments of my life captured in a photograph, and therin lies one of the true joys of the medium.

And so after twenty plus years working in a gallery market I can safely say that, ‘my favorite will never be your favorite.’ And then there is the photographers favorite…

'A photographers photographer’ was a term often used back in the days when I was printing for clients in my little North London darkroom, but it something you don’t really hear now. (Personally I blame the over-saturation of the digital market and online content, but I am sure it still exists.) A photographers photographer often referred to work that was more than just a visually stunning image, there was something more. These images had meaning and depth, but often you had to really look at the image and not just swipe at it as we might with so many of the fruity, colorful, hyper-real images of today. Thanks to today’s digital online platforms, it’s easy to find a photographers photographer. There the ones with the least amount of followers..

marcus doyle 9/5/23 marcus doyle 9/5/23

On starting projects

Imperial Sand Dunes, AZ.
The Deserving Oasis.

Photography projects tend to begin in many different ways. My Friday’s Rainshadow started by sheer chance after a trip to the Mojave Desert where I just happened to have a 617 camera I was trying out. The panoramic format added a new dimension to the images and gave me a different way of looking at the landscape. For part two of the project, The Deserving Oasis- an exploration of the Sonoran Desert, things have been a little less straight forward. Like a writers second book deal, there is more pressure and higher expectations, especially after obtaining a grant/ advance. One issue I have encountered is the feeling of the work is not good enough. With the Rainshadow work, It didn’t really matter at first what the images were of, in fact I spent six months shooting work I would never show, it was all over the place.

Projects always take time to develop and mature and it is only when we revisit places over and over that we start to see patterns develop and a vernacular is created. Its certainly not something that can be done in a day. From past experience I am pretty sure I will feel differently after more time spent in the heat.

In this day and age people always want things finished so fast which I find quite sad. A sense of urgency Is never a good thing.

marcus doyle 9/4/23 marcus doyle 9/4/23

Who doesn’t like nostalgia?

It is safe to say that the older we become the more nostalgia fills our everyday.

Personally I love nostalgia and often wonder how I could photograph nostalgia without the passing of time.

It’s hard to imaging what early pioneers like Stephen Shore were feeling when then photographed a 1970’s Cadillac, in the 70’s. It certainly wasn’t nostalgia. If we did know what would resonate nostalgia later in life, then we would all know the future and then some.

In photography nostalgia often gets a bad rap, whether choosing to shoot film just because you like the way it looks (nostalgic), or by using a digital sepia filter app in an attempt to recreate some past experience- like when your grandfather wore a suit during a visit to the beach.

We may not be able to look into the future, but we can certainly look into the past, albeit with rose tinted vintage spectacles.

Despite making my first photographs some 40 years ago, I still do not consider any of those early attempts as being nostalgic. Even the image I made of my Grannie MacGregor on her 100th birthday (when I was just 15 years old) doesn’t really resonate a warm fuzzy sense of well being, to me she just looks old.

marcus doyle 5/28/19 marcus doyle 5/28/19

The Importance of bad photography.

It all begins with an idea.

Never is a photograph more important than after the death of a loved one. Those forgotten family outings in the form of faded album snaps can suddenly become precious, although the idea of the family album has now been replaced with this thing called iPhoto.

It was this necessity of having a photograph of a loved one for the fear of forgetting them that drove the photography market back in the mid 1850’s. The only difference today is that those finely detailed mirrors with memory, the daguerreotype, have been replaced with digital screen savers.

After the death of my father, even as a photographer, I wish I had made more photographs of him, in particular more photographs of us together.

Of course, even without a photograph, we do not forget, but still, the importance of photography at helping us to remember has been with us for 180 years. What intrigues me is that this kind of photography never has to be considered any good. In fact it could be the worst image ever made because it’s all about content, and not the actual photograph. As long as it bares some form of resemblance, anything goes.

A photograph may fade or become lost, or a photographic moment missed, but the permanent record of loved ones will always be in our mind for as long as we can remember. Therefore, do we actually need photographs in the first place.