Botticelli and Cat Shit

I am having a rather dramatic wave of self doubt if that helps you believe I am human .. it’s part of the process as I move towards sharing the series of works from the very private and intimate creations from the series 'No Place Like Home' by slapping them on the wall for people to judge. The viewer inevitably brings a criteria and motivation to the work often in conflict with my own increasingly lost message, my voice drowned out even in my own space. Hence the statement if you can be arsed to read it.

Our shear unadulterated arrogance mostly masked by social convention occasionally shows itself. I often define what are called mental health issues especially those with depression as a consequence of being connected to the brutal reality, the realisation of a vast, cold, heartless universe, so vast in time and space that nothing matters. What a friend of mine calls my 'Godless gaze'. Fly too close to the sun again and again and it becomes all we know and what was a balanced existence is a fading memory.

So desperate to find our way back from the agony of self-knowledge to the stable ground of denial that has long since departed, a craving nostalgia for a life less complicated and damaged, fuelling an increasing sense of isolation and existential loneliness no longer able to be hidden by an increasingly flimsy persona. The standards set by our ego become the enemy to self love. We can live too long perhaps as to pass through multiple identities of which mine has always been unstable from the start, giving me empathy for anyone less comfortable with this constant and unnerving dislocation. I'm drawn to it like a fly to cat shit, my sub-conscious antennae seeking a parity with the like-minded but the existential loss I carry, I am ashamed too say, always defined 'others' as more complete than myself regardless of their own suffering.

Silence is very important but it can be dangerous to, we can make assumptions of the unspoken and very often a different truth can only come out if the right question is asked. My impertinence that Sierra and I had that unspoken understanding during the capture of these images of their decapitated body both as the reclining muse and here in the twisting female stereotype inherited from the representations of the male gaze of art history. A conventional beauty interrupted by the scars as memories of a recent past too unbearable. A home, if you can call it that, has become an allegory for depression, filth accompanies despair; if you don't intend to live, why hoover. Nothing matters.

The unadulterated documentation is empathy, if I am invited to join my subject in the abyss I feel it is my responsibility  to return with the evidence (if I make it back). It would be a great failure to sanitise such an extraordinary gift in the misguided presumption of dignity that only belongs in the mind of the privileged. I recall, deeply hallucinating from food poisoning in a small village in Kerala; I cling onto the edge of what I perceive to be an abyss, terrified to let go not knowing what awaited me. How disappointing and what an opportunity missed.

I am celebrating survival as beauty. I am celebrating Sierra's beauty because I feel less able to celebrate my own.

Botticelli and Cat Shit #28729 © Richard Ansett 2020

Nothing Matters..

File:_T7A1950 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018

File:_T7A1842 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018

The huge challenge of attempting to illustrate the complex and bespoke nature of mental health, especially through such a limited 2 dimensional medium, has led me to the realisation that perhaps photography in its purest sense is not enough and I am deluding myself if I consider that somehow I am 'making a difference'. Don McCullin (who does not define himself as an artist) admits that his images will make no difference to the subjects he has taken, many of whom were either already dead or would soon be. It does beggar the question 'what are we doing this for ?' and this is an intellectual anxiety at the fore front of the mind of the empathic artist. Conscience and responsibility are part of the self negotiation in the representation of other people.

Depression is hard enough to define in any medium and perhaps so much exposure to it has allowed it to infect my own confidence. Being around complex and overwhelming mental issues does take its toll for a sensitive and confluent person. I have been known to say that I do not care about my subjects but this is a conceptual statement only, their identity is less important than the message I am attempting to communicate through them. I am attempting to detach the conventional narrative that helps us to easily define and therefore compartmentalise the subject as 'other', so that we as an audience can potentially imagine this hell for ourselves.

For example, without wishing to pull back the Wizard's curtain too swiftly, this man's name is not George, it is in fact Edward; it doesn't matter, nothing matters. I find confidence to declare my process through the anecdotes of other artists and I recently read that David Hockney re-named the cat in his most famous painting 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' because it sounded better. 'Nothing Matters Edward' doesn't have the same flow either.

I spent some time recently alone with George, he is so consumed with ennui and despair at the loss of his mother that he inspired an attempt to define it, or perhaps to attempt to capture something of it, bottle it or worse pseudo-scientifically observe if the molecules bouncing back from him and onto the cold hard plain of my image sensor convey anything of his suffering to you or even me. Can his emotional and physical pain that is so visceral in the moment be captured within the boundaries of the conventional photograph? My practice is defined by this challenge. I am not looking to redefine the craft but create new and original work within traditional boundaries.

Margaret Atwood accidentally came close to defining depression when she stated that "There is always hope. Otherwise why get up in the morning." Similarly, to believe that “if one thing matters” to quote Wolfgang Tillmans “everything matters” noble as it is, sentimentalises a starker reality, that the fabric of our existence is a fictitious human framework to help make sense of our insignificance. Depression is a consequence of this awakening from this delusion. Depression can be defined as progress as we awaken into a hopeless realisation.

As in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus to face this realisation is to risk destruction. Depression is a bespoke emotional and physical destruction, the pain of imprisonment of self through a failure to rationalise truth.

The awareness of the hopelessness of reality and our existence within it, is something we must negotiate but this awakening can come as a terrible shock to the unprepared. As an artist I deliberately place my hand in the flame. Mortal anxiety is a catalyst to this process and how we manage our relationship to it defines us as unique, complex individuals.

The paradox is that there is hope; the irony is that there is only one thing that can help us come to terms with 'the hell of existential loneliness, OTHER PEOPLE. We are both the problem and the solution.

SEE FULL SERIES HERE: Nothing Matters George, 2018 

Smoking Causes Ageing of the Skin

Image_004, Smoking Causes Ageing of the Skin © Richard Ansett 2014

Bill Oddie

Bird watching brought me to photography, as a teenager I was taught that standing still and quietly in a landscape would be rewarded . My greatest achievement was capturing a rare and very shy Water rail at a conservation area near where we lived. I waited all day in a hide with my father's old russian Zenit and a fixed 200mm lens; it only appeared for a few seconds but i was able to grab a bad photograph of it. None the less the fine line between success and failure in that fleeting moment was hugely addictive. I progressed to setting up cameras and flashes near to garden bird feeders and remotely triggering them from the kitchen.

I was grieving for the loss of my ability to see small birds when my eyesight failed in 2011 so I started to learn the songs instead; luckily my sight has improved enough to regain the connection to my youth, I was watching Kites in the Chilterns last weekend. I wonder if happiness is only defined as this re-connection to childhood memory; I hope it is not, for the sake of those who only have terrible early memories or anyone struggling to find peace as adults.

Bill Oddie has been very open about his periods of depression, which I hope can only help with the understanding of the condition and offer support to others. He is a lovely man and passionate campaigner for birds and wildlife.

The National Portrait Gallery has acquired his portrait for the Permanent Collection.

Bill Oddie, London Wetlands Centre for Radio Times © Richard Ansett 2014

Curtains Drawn in Daylight

Image_7022 © Richard Ansett 2014

Image_6979 © Richard Ansett 2014

Image_6995 © Richard Ansett 2014

Jacqueline Daly assisting © Richard Ansett 2014