During 2015 I have been moving away from "straight" photography and towards a constructed mix of photographic and drawn elements. I have found that this approach to picture-making has released a new wave of creative activity. In the photo-collages I have made so far, crows have played a prominent part. I like crows. I think of them as adaptable survivors, ubiquitous yet characterful, quarrelsome yet loyal to the tribe, aggressive yet intelligent and curious, far from pretty but endowed with a certain scruffy dignity. They also seem to carry a feeling of responsibility towards bird-life in general, acting as a spontaneous militia: let a predatory buzzard or hawk appear in the sky, and a squadron of crows, rooks and even jackdaws will scramble to harass it until it glides off to some other, less populated neck of the woods. Needless to say, I grew up among crows.
Towards the end of the year I made a selection of these images, and produced a book, a 30cm square hardback, privately-distributed and in a very limited edition of ten, plus two proof copies. This gallery presents all the page-spreads from that book, Crow Country.
Since then, crows of all sorts have featured in my work, directly or indirectly. Most recently, in a small book (and calendar) Crow Time.
