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Roger is from Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. He started taking photographs when he was 11. He originally came to Liverpool to study architecture and play drums. In between working on his own photographic projects and undertaking on commissions, he works with Tate Liverpool. He exhibits with Soup and the Oxton Artists.
Artist Statement
“After an initial foray with a plastic camera aged 8, I was given a Twin Lens Reflex camera at 11 and started taking photographs in earnest. My father taught me; he had a darkroom so I experienced the magic. I did better work then; direct, no influences, emulating no one.
I prefer the waist level viewfinder. You look down onto a two-dimensional screen, image reversed laterally, so there is a remove from the literal. With a conventional viewfinder you look through. You see as a hunter, looking for food or for danger, spatially. It’s a different thing.
I believe photographs are abstract, because freezing a moment in time is unnatural, and there are many ways in which the camera sees things we cannot, or in a different way. We forget this because there's so much of it about.
Overall, I'm interested in essence and resonance, seeking the universal in the ephemeral. I do not rearrange what I find, nor manipulate the image, but I don’t mind if it looks that way. I like the facts to be ambiguous, for it to be unclear when and how an image was made – to allow space for the imagination. Again, there should be a remove from the literal, an image not a recording”.
