Harry Cundell
Introduction
Always looking for a new angle. Totally committed to photography and the power of the visual message. Has been taking and making pictures for 45 years. Now concentrates on abstract and ultra close up photography, particularly roots. Searches for connections.
Harry's philosophy
Harry supposes that age and occupation, during our working lives, both have an effect on our artistic talents. He spent nearly 40 frustrating years in Banking and retired in 1978 at the age of 54. Between then and now, he says, has been a period of absolute excitement and adventure. Now if what he isnt doing isnt totally absorbing he looks for a new light.
Since he started taking photographs 40 years ago he has always been inquisitive, looking for new ways to express himself, different processes, stretching his skills. What is the end product to be this time? He is always asking himself. He has always been fascinated and excited by the Bauhaus and the work of the famous surrealists and in his search for a new entry into that world he discovered some four years ago that the ordinary digital flat bed scanner was a very underrated piece of equipment which could help him in his experiments and could create something new.
The individually scanned pictures can all be amalgamated with other images in photoshop, each at an extremely high resolution and each having it�s own layer and identity. It is not unusual, he says, to use over twenty such layers to perfect the final picture. He normally goes for a rcsolution of 700 megabytes for an A4 as he doesnt know how much of the original picture he needs to use: it may just be a small piece out of the centre. At this level one needs at least a gigabyte of ram because it must be remembered that these are massive files and Photoshop itself needs its own share of memory but the image resulting from a flat bed scan is often a much sharper image than it is possible to obtain with a camera. His selections from the objects he scans will eventually end up as IOX to 20X enlargements.
For making the pictures he initially had in mind, which in the first series consisted of vegetable roots and fruit, the correct lighting was very necessary as he needed plenty of detail. He has always thought that flash was too harsh for close up work, but the light from a scan he found ideal.
At present he is using colour filters and mirrors silvered on the front instead of the back which gives a totally new dimension. Balance between light and colour is vital and rather like Cartier Bressons ' seeing eye ' the picture is only there for a split second before the searching for detail, by shifting the elements, moves on
further information
Additional Imformation :-
Harry has his own website www.harrycundell.co.uk
All pictures are for sale. Please contact him at harryc@sky.com