(2017-2022)
This body of work is a distinct photographic and text art project, made and inspired from two trips to India in 2017 & 2018.
Looking For Signs, is an experience of India made through the expressive frame of a hand held camera. The snapshot vision is used as a means of fluid and creative documentation of social spaces and experiences of the self, set in the atmosphere and dynamic arena of India. The artistic territory of this art is located within existential, abstract and fragmented social encounters. A fleeting convergence of appearances and dissolutions, where self and other, collide and merge through the meeting point of a camera. The snapshot aesthetic, with its ease, its lack of hierarchies and pictorial energy is utilized here within the broad language of fine art, where meaning is open, expanded and uncertain. These subjective photographs of travel are made in the mind, where the camera mediates between appearance, experience and idea. My motivation is one of a pilgrim and not a tourist.
This book is an unfolding of time and narrative, a cinematic flow of appearances. The sense of movement and journey is also embedded in the images themselves where social encounters with appearances unfold ‘as a passing show’. Here expressive picture making collides and entangles with the specificity and ecosystem of communities, culture and drama of place.
India is a complex, dynamic, deep-rooted enlightened culture, containing dualities and social contrasts. Alongside this experience of the subcontinent of India, there is a self-awareness of the dynamics of the outsider as image-maker. Equally celebrated here are encounters with a diverse range of images, artefacts and signage’s as they are presented, displayed and experienced within public spaces. Collectively here they speak of representation and its complexity.
An underlying strata of this book is an affectionate meditation on the universal conventions, democratic versatility and proliferation of the photographic medium itself: its technology and equipment; its role within collective memory, historical remembrance, storytelling and desire. Also, how the fundamental physical materiality of the medium of images, technology and craft are subject to disuse, erosion and dissolution.
In this book, images found themselves, evolving into chapters of narrative sequence, formed through the rhythmic unfolding of their own visual logic. The resulting project is a collage of intertwined pictorial narratives that seek to navigate and chart a coherent world-view, mapping the boundaries and dualistic crossing points between light and dark, the mundane and the poetic, absence and presence, social and spiritual, the fleeting and the boundless, photography and art and the transference from image to icon.
> Publication
140x240mm Case Bound / Exposed Spine
6pp Cover, Monotone printing and debossed.
304 pp, 150 gsm Silk paper
200 B&W plates plus 40 silver duatones.
Photographs: Peter Finnemore
Editing: Peter Finnemore & Alejandro Acín
Design: Alejandro Acín
Translations: Joseff Govinda Howells
Printing: Taylor Borthers
Published by Peter Finnemore in collaboration
with ICVL Studio. Gwendraeth House, 2022
ISBN 979-8-88680-470-6
Discounted price on signed copies until publication date (July 2022)
£35+P&P > ORDER BOOK NOW
£100 ORDER > ORDER BOOK + PRINT
(Limited signed edition of 25 pigment prints 137x87mm on 300gsm Matt Silk Archival Paper)
“In Looking for Signs Peter Finnemore plays with visual symbols drawing connections between time and place. Through the subjective eye of the artist we are carried on a poetic journey exploring and questioning the possibilities and traditions of the photographic medium. The book serves as a reflection on the presence of the photographic image in culture, its relationship with the sacred and documenting ephemeral experiences.”
Siân Addicott, FFotogallery Director, the national agency for photography and lens based media in Wales.
"The book revisits ancient and modern symbols through the camera of Peter. The visuals are diverse and some take us back to the ancient cave paintings while some remind us of the latest photo jargon. It is a beautiful narrative by a photographer from across the sea."
Dr Tabeenah Anjum. Senior Journalist & Visual Storyteller Adjunct Professor, Haridev Joshi State University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jaipur
> Conversation
Post Colonial Conversations , between South Asia and Wales Glynn Vivian Web Seminar May 2020.
Utube video of book
Made by Tipi Bookshop
Spreads from the publication mock up, Looking for Signs.
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival
Pigment Print, 29
x 42 cm, 2018
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival Pigment Print, 29 x 42 cm, 2018
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival
Pigment Print, 29
x 42 cm, 2018
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival Pigment Print, 29 x 42 cm, 2018
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival Pigment
Print, 29 x 42
cm , 2018
India
photo series, ‘Looking for Signs’, Fine Art Archival Pigment Print, 29 x 42 cm, 2018
> Publication
140x240mm Swiss Bound
6pp Cover, Monotone printing and debossed.
304 pp, 150 gsm Silk paper
200 B&W plates plus 40 silver duatones.
Photographs: Peter Finnemore
Editing: Peter Finnemore & Alejandro Acín
Design: Alejandro Acín
Translations: Joseff Govinda Howells
Printing: Taylor Borthers
Published by Peter Finnemore in collaboration
with ICVL Studio. Gwendraeth House, 2022
ISBN 979-8-88680-470-6
Discounted price until publication date (July 2022)
£35+P&P > ORDER BOOK NOW
£100 ORDER > ORDER BOOK + PRINT
(Limited edition of 20 pigment prints on 300gsm Matt Silk Archival Paper)
(2017-2022)
This body of work is a distinct photographic and text art project, made and inspired from two trips to India in 2017 & 2018.
Looking For Signs, is an experience of India made through the expressive frame of a hand held camera. The snapshot vision is used as a means of fluid and creative documentation of social spaces and experiences of the self, set in the atmosphere and dynamic arena of India. The territory of this work is existential, abstract and fragmented. A fleeting convergence of appearances and dissolutions, where self and other, collide and merge through the meeting point of a camera. The snapshot image, with its ease, its lack of hierarchies and randomness is utilized here within the broad language of fine art. Where meaning is open, expanded and uncertain. These subjective photographs of travel are made in the mind. My motivation was one of a pilgrim and not a tourist.
This book is an unfolding of time and narrative, a cinematic flow of appearances. The sense of movement and journey is also embedded in the images themselves. Where social encounters with appearances unfold ‘as a passing show’. Here, being, collides and entangles with the specificity and ecosystem of communities, culture and history of place.
India is a complex, dynamic, deep-rooted enlightened culture, containing dualities and contrasts. Alongside this experience within the subcontinent of India, there is a self-awareness of the dynamics of the outsider as image-maker. Equally, I am receptive to native self-representation through; local folk art, commercial displays, art fairs and national cultural traditions.
An underlying strata of this book is an affectionate meditation on the universal conventions, democratic versatility and proliferation of the photographic medium itself; its technology and equipment; its role within collective memory, historical remembrance, story telling and desire. Also, how the fundamental physical materiality of the medium - of images, technology and craft are subject to disuse, erosion and dissolution.
In this book, images found themselves, evolving into chapters of narrative sequence, formed through the rhythmic unfolding of its own visual logic. The resulting work is an unfolding collage of pictorial narratives, that seeks to navigate, and chart a coherent world-view, of the mapping of the crossover & border territories of dualistic interconnectedness; between - perception and manifestation, the momentary and infinite, physical and ephemeral, social and spiritual, form and formlessness, and the transference from image to icon.
"The book revisits ancient and modern symbols through the camera of Peter. The visuals are diverse and some take us back to the ancient cave paintings while some remind us of the latest photo jargon. It is a beautiful narrative by a photographer from across the sea."
Dr Tabeenah Anjum. Senior Journalist & Visual Storyteller Adjunct Professor, Haridev Joshi State University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jaipur
> Conversation
Post Colonial Conversations , between South Asia and Wales Glynn Vivian Web Seminar May 2020.