Statement

Ian Phillips McLaren is a British artist; his practice combines contemporary and 19th century photographic processes, using a versatility both in camera and print making techniques to achieve his results. From Chinese plastic cameras, large format to pinhole, traditional film negatives, paper negatives, digital negatives and hand-made papers and home made emulsions.
The tactile qualities and hand-made unique prints give his photographs a quality that echoes the 19th century but address very real and contemporary issues.

“It gives me immense satisfaction knowing that I have made the image from concept to finish, mixing my own chemicals and painting them onto the papers surface.
There’s something almost magical watching an image appear in front of your eyes – but when you have created this image from practically nothing, with just a few chemicals, some water and paper it’s nothing short of incredible.

I take inspiration from Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier and Henry Peach Robinson, Josef Sudek for his simplicity and integrity; 14th to 19th Century painters inform my still life, and the contemporary photographers Starn Twins and Sally Mann I admire for their embracing of happy accidents in the making.

I apply these influences like the Pictorialists who used the camera like a painter would use a paint brush, giving the photograph an aesthetic more akin to painting than a simple recording device.”