The Picture and the Audience

A photograph without an audience has no real value. There have been times when shooting wildlife that I have been alone at a waterhole, waiting for something interesting to come along, and wondered why on earth I was doing what I was doing. Then an animal would walk into the frame, something interesting and would happen and a good picture would come out of the encounter.  But the challenge remains to get the picture seen by people. Like an actor or a musician, a photographer has an innate need for an audience.

So when I have my big outdoor exhibitions and see large numbers of people milling around, looking at the pictures, pausing and enjoying them; it is immensely rewarding. Outdoor exhibitions have a special status. In Moscow I saw people standing in the rain while looking at a picture of rain falling on a chimp. By being outdoors, the viewer encounters the elements, feels the cold or the heat and of course breathes fresh air. Because the pictures are big, peripheral vision is lost and the viewer becomes immersed in the pictures - transported into the scene. During the exhibition in Stavanger, a man was looking at a picture of seabirds in Antarctica when a gull flew over him and, determined to enhance his experience of the image, the bird dropped a large gooey blob of guano on his head.