Well-composed, full of dusky charcoal shadows and ripe with a dusty, languid nostalgia, there is something deeply appealing and somehow morbid about Andrew Ward's 35mm photography. His background in technical film-making is immediately evident in the images; they could easily be stills from a slow, ambient, pointless short reflecting on life in what the images evoke as the Third World. Some of the photographs reflect a keen eye for opportunities in his environment - a shot of light falling through a café window, etching the letters of the sign onto the wooden table - but as a collection they fall far short of photojournalism. They are too whimsical to be significant and too contextualised to be purely aesthetic photography. They inhabit the marginalised perimeter in the discipline that their subjects occupy in society; an Asphodel Plain of warm, attractive, detailed and ultimately unimportant moments.
Nonetheless, Ward's portfolio is simple, unpretentious, selective and very attractive. Rather than focus on a CV of exhibitions he brings to prominence in his biography the fact that his work graces the private collections of the likes of Wim Wenders, Steven Soderberg, Owen Wilson and Mackenzie Crook. A risky boast for a man who clearly has professional associations with such public figures, and one that says very little about the aesthetic quality of his work since we have minimal information on Owen Wilson's appreciation of composition, but an interesting way to push a reputation which for all intents and purposes appears well-deserved.
also on aS.blogspot
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