Featured Photographer: Adrian Saker

Adrian Saker

"I was born in Marston Green, a suburb of Birmingham.

 I was raised by my mom, who worked as a manageress in a hotel,

and when I was a kid frequently took me to work with her.

 She was a very bright woman who fostered an interest in the arts in me."

 "From an early age I can remember being fascinated watching the ebb and flow of humanity around me, and used to make up little stories about the people who passed by. 

Today I live near Hall Green, a suburb on the other side of the city, 

with my partner who is a musician, and the occasional visiting cat."

" For me, photography like poetry, its about suggestion and the tension 

 between reality and fiction - something that is never entirely resolved.

 It doesn't give itself over to words and it is not quite definable.

 My interest in photography stems from both a desire to understand and connect with the people and places around me.

 Each click of the camera is a new adventure, an opportunity to discover something meaningful, in ordinary, day to day life."

"What draws me to each subject isn't necessarily something that

 I can define, in that I don't know what I am looking for until I find it. 
The majority of portraits that I've made are records of random encounters."

"It is unusual for me to photography people that I know.

 These fragmentary records of a meeting become something creative, a mixture of the nature of the real world and subjective act of photographing, that aims to encompass an emotional resonance which the viewer can relate to by bringing their own experiences into their interpretation of the work. 

We create patterns with life in order that we can express it as narrative. 

In the photograph, narrative is always something which is implied, a tiny fragment of life that is a subjective response to the complexity of the world."

"In the last line of the poem, "I Remember, I Remember" Philip Larkin writes,

 "Nothing, like something, happens anywhere." 

This idea of the "nothing" that happens anywhere is one of the major themes in the pictures here, which are taken from the series "Subtopia."

 Set in the suburban heartland of the English Midlands, where I live, it is a mediation on place, identity, community, the cultural idea of the contemporary suburbs whilst at the same time drawing upon my own memories and background."

"I’m inspired by the next picture, curiosity and the next encounter,

the next adventure with the who, what and why of people’s lives."

              "The eye traffics in feelings, not thoughts" - Walker Evans

         

                                                                          (Interview by Carli Vogel)