Ahh, washing day - that day when I realise that all my clothes are too stinky to wear any more times and it’s time to make them clean. That day has come for me, so I must do battle with the posessed washing machine of doom. It’s noisy, it makes the lights flicker because of the dodgy wiring in this house, and the knob thing on it’s busted so you don’t always know where in the cycle you’re starting it!
I’m also trying to come up with a new business name and site/card to go with it - ricetek’s been around as an idea since 2002 - it doesn’t suit the way that I’m going with my life these days. If you know me, I’m working on my skills as a photographer and discovering a lot of things about how I see the world. I ask myself constantly what the story is behind every thing that I see, and how I can portray it to others. Places, things that are there for a reason - whether intentional or forgotten - and the questions that people ask about their lives.
But how to portray all these things? How to tell the story? This is what I’m working on now. Picture a cup - it’s simple - a cup. But what happens to this cup? You put coffee, tea, soft drink, cordial, water, wine, spirits or peanuts in it, and it holds something. Some people’s cups follow them through many different places, times and experiences. The cup of the man in the trenches for a war can serve many purposes. The coffee cup that lives on your desk in your office lives a relatively simple life. When people travel into space, the depths of the ocean, the deserts or the ice fields of the antarctic, they all need something that looks or serves the purposes of a cup. They all have their stories, and telling those stories well is a revealing process for the artist, let alone the viewer.
It’s probably something you don’t think of much, but that’s my job as a photographer. To make you think!
For now, I’m working on the idea of using “Cerdo Rudis” as my business name - Cerdo is latin for artist, and Rudis for “unskilled” or “raw” to signify not only my current skill level, but also the way that I seem to be developing my style. It’s raw, bringing the story out and showing what’s there, opening myself and the subject up to let the viewer of the art see into the depths. It’s hard to explain, but well, it’s me 🙂
So now I’ll probably keep ricetek for my personal and weird stuff, maybe my technology side, but cerdo rudis will be my new beginning, allowing me to house my art, and show people what I can do.