Marc Provins

Last year I made a book. As often happens with a creative undertaking, it has taken some time and distance to work out how I feel about it, especially as it is formed from very personal experiences. It continues my photographic work at the periphery of the city, exploring that space just beyond the urban, but not yet rural. It also explores my own personal boundaries, made during a time of huge change in my life, you might say a midlife crisis of sorts. As a wise friend pointed out to me, according to the Oxford English Dictionary the original meaning of crisis is “a state of affairs in which a decisive change for better or worse is imminent; a turning point”. This book is me trying to make sense of that turning point; exploring what I feel about being in my fifties, being queer in my fifties, how I feel about my ageing body, how others feel about my ageing body, how I feel about how others feel about my ageing body!    Walking (using my ageing body) is central to how I start ...

News: For the last ten months or so I've been collaborating with two other photographers; Michael McGinley and Mike Stephens, exploring how our work overlaps and works together. We are now taking this experiment further by creating an exhibition  of our works  in Arles, France. This is curated as a collaborative piece and is the first presentation of the ideas and visuals we have been developing together.  We are all exploring landscape photography, responding to a changing world and attempting to find fresh ways to express our responses. For me this is an extension of my Periphery project; investigating the relationship between humankind and the natural world through the fringes of cities.  We are part of the Voies Off festival which runs alongside Les Rencontres d'Arles: http://voies-off.com/index.php/en/ So if you happen to be in Arles between the 29th July and the 4th of August, please come and see us and our works ...

I've been walking slowly. I want to notice the texture of the city, the history in it's surface. It becomes a meditation on material construction, bringing the background slowly into focus. The brick is part of our human history used to shelter us for thousands of years. Cities in the North West seem to be expanding upwards and outwards rapidly at the moment, which can be exciting. I hope that we manage to conserve the best bits from every era rather than pulling older buildings down and throwing up new, larger ones in a generic international style.  It might sound hugely optimistic but I'd like creativity not just money to shape our built environment.