I am originally from the U.K. but have lived and worked in Sweden for many years. In retrospect, it is not surprising that I have gravitated towards photography as a way of exploring how I feel about the world around me, since I have always thought in pictures, and I generally prefer the practical end of the applied-to-fine arts spectrum.
I used to dream of travelling to take photographs of the remote and the exotic. I still do, but I know myself well enough now to be sure that the photographs would not be worth showing. Perhaps I am just slow on the uptake, but it takes me time to apprehend the visual significance of things, and those of my photographs which move me the most are the ones taken over an extended period of time on repeated visits to the same small places.
I have a grounding fascination with what form can tell me about process. I am old fashioned enough to want to take photographs which delight the eye, but I try to avoid mere beauty - or, at least, the superficial, dismissable beauty of the romantic landscape canon. I love tangled untidiness and syncopated spatial rhythms, and in choosing my colours I will always take a wash of subtle secondaries over any amount of primary fire.
I hope always to retain that childlike sense that every last pebble on the beach is worth taking home with me.
Struan Gray
Lund, Sweden
