Interviews,  LensCulture Articles,  News

My Latest Mobile Photography LensCulture Article – ‘In Conversation with David Booker/BlemishedEye’

As many of you will know, among the assortment of hats that I wear, writing for the BBC and Vogue, I am also Contributing Editor to LensCulture.  My latest article with LensCulture has recently been published. This time, I review David Booker’s/BlemishedEye’s mobile photography portfolio and philosophy and have created an insight into the mind behind the images. I have republished it below (if you would like to read/view it on LensCulture, please go here).

“I have always been drawn to images that have a dark undertone to them, particularly when combined with a sensual or sexual element.”

—David Booker in conversation with LensCulture Contributing Editor, Joanne Carter.

Image – © David Booker

While seemingly unbearably intimate, David Booker’s images of his wife, Eve, allow us to share the couple’s emotional, elusive connection in an almost voyeuristic way. Visceral, stimulating and eerily linked with one another, Booker’s photographs engage us from the first moment and elicit strong emotions long after the initial glance.

Image – © David Booker

The majority of Booker’s images are nudes of his new wife but they don’t feel like nudes; they feel like experiments in the art of photography. Each frame spills over with emotion—with Eve as a prop. But here in lies the irony: Booker photographs almost every area of Eve’s body within his art but is he revealing more of himself than of her?

Image – © David Booker

As a contrast, look at the self-portraiture work by Francesca Woodman (whom Booker deeply admires). In her photographs, revelations about Woodman do not come to the fore. In Woodman’s work, despite revealing so much of her physical self, she simultaneously shared so little. Woodman was explicitly self-involved but her oeuvre is not viewed as autobiographical.

Image – © David Booker

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?”

Image – © David Booker

Booker’s photographs, on the other hand, are so intimate that it feels as though we are viewing self-portraiture. He mixes elements of theatre and mysterious performances that play on the instability of identity. His desire to explore the possibilities of transformation is what drives his art. The concepts are inspired by an emotion or a mood and are thus executed with erotico-mystical heat.

Image – © David Booker

“I was inventing a Language for people to see…” (Francesca Woodman’s last journal entry, January 19, 1981)

Image – © David Booker

Mainly working in black-and-white, Booker’s palette reaches from a rich black to a brilliant white and plays with well more than 50 shades of grey. Stripping away the pretentiousness of high-end digital photography gear, Booker prefers to shoot exclusively with his new iPhones.

Image – © David Booker

Passionate about his photography, Booker desires recognition and his art deserves it.

Image – © David Booker

“I feel like I am floating in plasma I need a teacher or a lover I need someone to risk being involved with me. I am so vain and I am so masochistic. How can they coexist?”

Image – © David Booker

Editor’s Note: Joanne Carter is the Founder and Editorial Director of TheAppWhisperer.com and contributing editor for LensCulture.

Image – © David Booker

Image – © David Booker

Image – © David Booker

lens culture

Image – © David Booker

Image – © David Booker

Image – © David Booker

lensculture

Image – © David Booker

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]

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