UNSEENBEAUTY by Martin Carter
“The ability to observe millions of different colours, textures and layers within natural composition found in every day places. Looking at the effects of weather impaction along with human interaction upon the surface of the things we see all around us”.
I am an artist who suffers from crippling social anxiety, and because of this I have had moments in my life when I have to deal with deep depression due to my isolation. This is something I could only admit to recently and I am currently going through grief counselling as a starting point because there are many associations with depression that are complex and we are all unique in the way we process our life’s experiences.
A near death experience in the R. W. Paul silo building during the final few months of my art training at Ipswich Art School (in the 1990’s) had a huge impact on my physiology and has only grown stronger over the past 20 years. It has come to define my unique outlook upon life and the things I have come to appreciate, little things that mean a lot. The result of this event in my life, is what I look for in nature and how I look at things to contemplate their past.
The ability to observe millions of different colours, textures and layers within natural composition found in every day places. Looking at the effects of weather impaction along with human interaction upon the surface of the things we see all around us. This is what I do when I look through the lens of my camera. In the book ‘Ipswich Habitat’ (part of the UNSEENBEAUTY series) I explore the things I see in abstract macro format, to look at reality with more clarity. I go to all of the usual places that a landscape photographer would, but I try to find something they do not see. I look at the individual elements within the environment to extract an essence of a landscape that inspires an emotional response in the viewer, to find comfort in one of the landscapes that I have frozen in time. We all see things differently and have personal memories attached to the same things, but we can feel a universal emotion and that is what connects us all.
