Roger Hicks - The Final Frame

Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt. ‘Contempt’ is almost certainly too strong a word, but in my experience familiarity breeds visual indifference. In what follows, I apologise for a higher degree than usual of self-centredness, but equally, I’d suggest that many photographers would benefit from a similar degree of soul-searching.

I live in an exceptionally beautiful part of the world, and I try to follow William Morris’s dictum that you should have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. After seven years, though, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not ‘pictured out’ with the things there are to shoot around here. It just seems harder and harder to find inspiration. The weeping willows over the river, the ancient stone buildings, the cycle of the seasons from frosty winters to baking summer; yes, it’s all beautiful – and I’ve already photographed it.

Now, I know there are people whose minds don’t work in this way. They can go back to the same subject again and again, and shoot it a different way every time. For example, Weston could take endless pictures of peppers. Then again – and I know this smacks of heresy – I can’t help feeling that once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Or to quote a young friend of mine from many years ago, speaking of David Hamilton, ‘The first one is fantastic, and the second one is good, but after the tenth you start asking, what else can he do?’ Of course, Weston could do (and did) a lot more, but the argument about repeatedly photographing the same subject still holds good. Some can do it. Some can’t. I can’t.

At this point, we run into one of the most poisonous shibboleths of photography: the idea that you ‘ought’ to be able to find pictures in your own back yard. To quote Granny Weatherwax: show me where it says ‘ought’. There are some things you do because you have to: ‘have to’ in the sense that, for example, the Inland Revenue will get peevish if you don’t, or your employers won’t pay you if you don’t work, except perhaps in the case of non-executive directorships. There are other things you either do or not, as the spirit takes you.

Photography is in this latter category: you can take it or leave it. Even if you say (and believe) that you ‘have to’ take pictures, what you mean is ‘pictures that are satisfying to me’. Otherwise, you could sit in your chair and take pictures of a blank wall – though I suppose you might at least get an Arts Council grant for that. If you’re not turned on, photographically speaking, by your own back yard, then you’re not, and that’s it. There’s no ‘ought’ about it.

This is where things start to get iffy. If I move, will I in seven years be as ‘pictured out’ with a new location as I am here? If so, moving looks like a bad move (as it were). I’d have a job finding a house that was as roomy or as convenient as this one, quite apart from the hassle of actually moving. The people next door might be a lot noisier: right now, it’s offices on one side and a second home on the other that is only occupied for three or four months a year. I’d lose touch with most of the friends from round here, and have to make new ones. My property taxes and insurance would go up and, in seven years, I might be no better off than I am now.

On the plus side, though, the likeliest place I’d move to would be Arles, in the South of France. The one with the Rencontres de la Photographie every July. It’s not the Rencontres that especially draws me, though. No, rather it is a combination of two things. The first is that Arles is a quintessentially small city, and has been for more than 2,000 years. There’s just more to do, more to see, more to photograph in a city than there is in a village. Small cities have always been where I get my best pictures. The second thing is the Provençal light, the same light that drew Vincent van Gogh to Arles, where he is at least as much commercialised as the Rencontres.

But am I deceiving myself? Eventually, Vincent left Arles, and moved to Auvers, far to the north. I’ve been to Auvers. I can’t see why anyone would live there. Or why Vincent left Arles. Or whether it will do me any good to move, or not. AP

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