Square World

I’ve got this app on my phone that allows me to take square fake retro polaroid-like snaps. I love it. It reminds me very much of my analogue film camera days, when my student self used to shoot black and white films which I developed and printed in the dark room. I own a decent camera which I use to take ‘good’ photographs. On the phone however and more importantly with the app, I feel a lot more freedom. I can snap whatever excites me. It’s far more spontaneous, less overthought.

The snaps are what they are. Where I would take great effort into editing images taken on my DSLR, the snaps taken on my phone are as they are, with all their flaws. There is no point, really, in correcting them, like straightening horizons and correcting vertical lines; that would be immediately noticeable because of the big black frame. They are great as they are, crooked, out of focus, missing catch lights and so forth. Sometimes I take a few, to get the best possible image, but most of the time they are a single shot of a fleeting moment.

The first photographs I ever took were square. The disused Agfa Clack of my mother took film that produced 6x6 negatives. When I was studying art I was told that a square is the most neutral shape, neither portrait nor landscape. Some of my favorite photographers were known for their square images: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus. Vinyl records and compact disc sleeves are square.

A level of abstraction is added to shapes and forms when color is eliminated, yet (the majority of) the photos here are by no means abstract. Consistently using this format gells all the images together. Even though I lean heavily on the square, monochrome shape, I believe that every single image is very much recognisable as one taken by me and not someone else. That said, all photos have been taken without pretention and always been a celebration of either beauty, wit or astonishment.

In 2020, when we were all locked up at home because of the pandemic, I bundled my favorite square images into a book, titled Square World. It's available on Blurb if you're interested. If you would like a print of any of the images on this website, please contact me.