James Sparshatt

Esperanza by James Sparshatt - Photography, Gelatin Print with Wood Frame, 2002

2002

Las Memorias… sitting on a rocking chair in Viñales watching the sunset and thinking of life. The wife of a tobacco farmer, a strong woman of generosity and humour lost in thought w...

Christmas day on Santa Maria beach on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. James Sparshatt’s photographs of music and dance capture the emotion and intensity of people lost in the rhythm ...

Tango on the street corners of Buenos Aires James Sparshatt’s photographs of music and dance capture the emotion and intensity of people lost in the rhythm of the moment. The work ...

An image of adoration and worship. Holguín, Cuba during a festival of dance. James Sparshatt’s photographs of music and dance capture the emotion and intensity of people lost in the...

ATO>MIC #3, 2020 Unique Gelatin Silver Print/ Luminogram and Photogram technique, Printed on tea infused fibre based paper, Custom Framed: museum mount-board with antireflective UV protective art glass in dark brown lacquered hardwood frame, /hand made in UK/ 23 x 18 cm (image print) 40.5 x 36 cm (Framed) Unique Series: ATO>MIC Signed and dated in pencil on verso Provided with the Certificate of Authenticity “The ATO>MIC work started as an attempt to replicate the idea behind still life painting - where you are trying to reproduce the image of solid looking things, things that could be on a shelf. So, I wanted to try doing that with just using light instead of paints - however I soon started to see the similarities with Harold Edgerton’s famous atomic explosion photos and how the scale of my work could be switched between small items on a shelf to enormous atomic explosions. That is the reason behind the strange title ATO>MIC - where the “>” is a kind of link between larger and smaller scales, between the two influencing ideas.” – Mike G Jackson The images (from the ATO>MIC series) may be reminiscent of the first milliseconds of atomic bomb explosions captured by Harold Edgerton's Rapatronic camera in the early 1950s but also visualise the thought of Maholy-Nagy’s bold visions in the Bauhaus’s movement toward the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art.” The 3D concepts that were first expanded in the same art movement by El Lissitzky a hundred years ago, are also explored here by Jackson’s drowned thin line within the third of the image. In his vision, the line reflects a shelf with the object on top, by adding the weight to it, the gravity pushing them down. Or maybe the thin line is just the horizon, where the enormous atomic blast took place…? Beyond these flat forms of two dimensional ‘lumino-graphic’ works on paper, the purest form of photography (‘light drawing’) lays a visible path to three-dimensional imaginary world, realised in precise composition, rhythm and warm earthy tones of these works. It’s up to the viewer to decide what they prefer to see and take with them. As Wassily Kandinsky once said; “Imagination is what allows your mind to discover.” About the Artist: Michael G Jackson...

Central Park is part of a group of prints based on a visit to New York City, Because I live and work in quiet isolation and often don't meet anyone apa...

"A camera is a window through which a photographer interacts with the world, and it's up to the operator to decide whether his camera will be a barrier or a mirror between he and his subjects. In the 1970s, Michael Abramson...

The Beatles at Abbey Road Studios, March 30th 1967 during the recording of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, take a lunch break. Later that day they after recording they made their way to Michael Cooper's Flood Street Studios to pose for the famous album cover. This is an original traditional silver gelatin print signed by the photographer, printed in 2008 for inclusion in Herrmann's sol show The Unseen Beatles at The Saint Giles Street Gallery in Norwich. Though is says 1/25 the other prints in the edition were never printed and this image is not available anywhere else. Rare image hand printed. paper size 20 x 16, Image size 18 x 12 inches. This print is embossed with the photographers stamp, numbered and signed by the photographer Frank Herrmann in pencil on lower right margin. Frank Herrmann is widely regarded as one of the outstanding photojournalists of the latter part of the twentieth century, with an illustrious thirty year career at The Sunday Times. Covering stories as diverse as the UDI in Rhodesia in 1966, the Paris riots in ’68, the Yom Kippur War of '73, the U.S Presidential elections of ’75 and the birth of Zimbabwe in 1980, he has travelled to Africa with Bob Geldof to record the famine relief work of Band Aid, has been to the South Pole to photograph the trans-Arctic expedition and has worked with Hunter Davies on several books including The Glory Game and Great Britain – a Celebration as well as his text book book on portraiture titled Portrait photography. His many portrait sittings include,  amongst others, Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Sean Connery, William Burroughs, Winston Churchill, Duke Ellington, Harold Macmillan, Ronald Reagan, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Henry Moore, Judi Dench...