Saf Komakie
'Remembering Ray' - 2005Years ago when I was studying photography at Nottingham Trent University I came across 'Murmers at Every Turn' by Ray Moore in the library there. By the way, that library was probably the best stocked library for photography I've ever come across. This particular book consisted of about forty black and white images, done in a sort of documentary style and mostly taken in the 70s, I think.
Although the subject matter was invariably mundane there was often something a bit curious about some of these images. It was a quality of seeing that wasn't about the things that are most immediately obvious in photographs. Like most 'art' type photography of that time, and now I guess, there was a sort of challenge to the audience to find another layer of meaning. These were pictures that looked so easy to take and consequently not very impressive. Which maybe was Ray's point. I have to admit much of the time they didn't do anything for me but then at other times (I found myself going back to them to double-check) they were moving and beautiful. They seemed to be true to the objects and the light, capturing what it is to be at a certain ordinary place at a certain ordinary time, with a camera. To simply be present. That can be either very dull - or something very extraordinary.
Unusually for a photographer he had a major Hayward retrospective in about 1981. Yet within a decade of this career high point he had died and his work seems to have been out of print ever since.
The aesthetic that he embodied was intelligent and personal and along with Tony Ray-Jones and a few others, he worked purposefully as part of a burgeoning British photographic art movement.
The pix shown here were taken by me recently while just walking around with a camera and enjoying the late afternoon sun. Conditions perfect for remembering Ray's photographs. 'Murmers at Every Turn' was a pretty good title for that book.
Saf is a photographer based in Leicester. He has exhibited in Leicester and Derby and is currently working on a photo-diary based around his family and his work environment.
Saf Komakie
www.safkomakie.co.uk
