Sam Holden
+44(0)7760 175957
info@samholden.com
information
home
Projects
The Photographers - Part One
(27 images. C-type prints. 20cm x 25cm. 2004/05)
back to images
Invisible Monuments by Nicholas Fry © 2008________________________________Page 1/4
Tuesday: an ordinary day in London. A coach hisses to a standstill a few hundred yards from the gates. The doors concertina open and the vehicle promptly disgorges its disorientated human cargo. Some milling around and checking of pockets ensues before the full realisation sets in among the passengers that they have finally arrived.
The multicoloured group starts flocking towards its goal; several individuals break ahead of the crowd, some power-walking, some practically jogging, bum-bags and backpacks well-secured, cameras awkwardly swinging from necks, and legs working furiously inside breathable, waterproof trousers. The leaders promptly take up their positions at the front, while the others file in behind, making do with the remaining vantage points. Suddenly, everyone settles down into relative stillness, dotted around on the regal-red tarmac, cameras in hand, poised beneath the great monument. Finally, there before their very eyes is the real thing: Buckingham Palace.
It is at this moment that photographer Sam Holden begins his work. But Buckingham Palace is not his subject. His latest collection of images catches tourist photographers ‘in the act’. Just as they begin squaring-up their unique pictures of la Plaça España, Buckingham Palace, La Alhambra or Parc Güell, Holden is there with his camera, ready to immortalise them at the crucial moment of their artistic endeavours.
Digital photography has a good deal to answer for. It gives us the advantage of having as many goes as we like. Every tourist can take five hundred pictures and select the best to print. The activity has therefore become an editorial one; a process in which a critical eye is essential. More people are engaging with how to distinguish between a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ picture, and considering the recent introduction of the camera-phone and the proliferation of photo-sharing websites such as flickr.com, it is hardly surprising that the challenges and rewards of photography have become a widespread preoccupation. But, how good can a picture of Buckingham Palace really be when each year around two million people, armed with cameras, visit the very same grey stone façade?