MIKE SPENCER - BIOGRAPHY
HOME MILTON KEYNES, UK
CAZAUX D’ANGLES, FRANCE
OCCUPATION RETIRED SECONDARY SCHOOL HEADTEACHER
PHOTOGRAPHY FOR MANY YEARS PHOTOGRAPHY WAS AN ADJUNCT TO
TRAVEL AND MOUNTAINEERING
NOW, ALTHOUGH LANDSCAPE CONTINUES TO DOMINATE, MY
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTEREST HAS BROADENED CONSIDERABLY
I USE A DIGITAL CAMERA, A NIKON D7000, BUT I LIKE TO
USE A RANGE OF CONVENTIONAL AND ALTERNATIVE PRINTING
TECHNIQUES
ANTHROPOMORPHOSIS - SORT OF
Most of all, I like to photograph the face,
The face of landscape,
An old face, wizened and wrinkled,
Pocked and pitted,
Worn and torn through use and mis-use,
Abandoned to time, or
Honed by the hand of artisan,
Wiped clean and rubbed smooth
To a patina through which
The old marks, weals and gouges
Of a life hard-lived show through,
Trace elements
Exposed to view by the angle of the sun
Or the droughted ground,
Or,
Distance,
Temporal or geophysical.
I like to look closely at a photograph.
To study its familiarity
Is to undertake an informal act of archaeology,
An affectionate decoding of runes
And a naming of parts,
An unsystematic survey of a two-dimensional antiquity.
Memory, the rubble-strewn residuum of the passage of time
Riffled papers, a buffed-up mirror, dog ears,
Scuffed over leaves and pebbles flicked at
By an outstretched foot,
Eyes blinking at the blinding edge of a sun-blocking cloud,
Provoking an act of recognition.
To recognise,
To know again.
“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.” *
* from Little Gidding, Four Quartets, TS Eliot.
