Media Coverage

Photography becomes art through the lens of South East Open Studios member Liz Garnett, interviewed here by Malcolm Triggs

One area in which the boundary between artist and craftsman has become increasingly blurred in recent years is photography.

The medium requires considerable technical expertise – even "point and shoot" cameras need to be used with skill to produce anything more than a second-rate snap – but at the same time the camera can, in the right hands, produce results as expressive and individual as any painting.

Brabourne Lees-based Liz Garnett is a case in point. Technically skilled, she has been commissioned for architectural and commercial work by such high quality publishers as Harpers and Queen, Phaidon and Reed Publishing.

Over the past few years, though, Liz’s photography has become increasingly experimental. While her current series of flower portraits could be described as still life, her treatment of the subject gives them a different sort of life, their high contrast colours and intense detail creating something that could only be described as art.

And while she has a passion for the abstract, Liz aims to create something that people will want to own, enjoy and display in the same way as they would any other piece of art. Her ambition, not surprisingly, is to see more photography in people’s homes.

“People see photography s expensive and go for cheaper options like photographic posters,� she explains. “But when you buy photography you are buying a work of art.�

Liz's commercial talents came to the fore early in life when, as a teenager, she photographed her school friends, developed the prints in an attic darkroom and sold them to the friends she had snapped.

Careers advice being as it was, though, Liz ended up doing a secretarial course instead of pursuing the more obvious path. “I couldn’t see myself as a wedding, portrait or press photographer,� she recalls.

Liz’s interest in photography had been kindled by her first camera, bought for her when she was seven or eight, but it was the combination of her first ‘real’ SLR camera and encouragement from her art teacher’s husband – who introduced her to black and white photography – that was the real inspiration.

It was while travelling the misdirected secretarial career path that she found herself working for the art director of Ebury Press and realised that she could carve herself a more fulfilling career in photography, leaving weddings and portraits well alone and concentrating instead on editorial travel pictures – a move that was partly inspired by a trip to Australia.

Even so, it was not until 1993 that Liz was able to quit full-time secretarial work and concentrate on her photography, building up an impressive stock of photographs of Northern France.

Marriage and two years in Calais was followed by a move to Kent, where Liz enrolled in a BTEC National Diploma course in photography, partly to meet some new friends and partly to rekindle her love of black and white photography.

While Liz still does travel and commercial photography, the BTEC course, her membership of Ashford Visual Artists and her involvement in the South East Open Studios event in June each year has seen her concentrating on the art photography for which she is becoming increasingly well known.

Liz's treatment of her flowers emphasises their graphic, abstract qualities and displays them in striking, unnatural colours. Other work covers a number of styles, including abstract, still life, landscape, experimental, emulsion lifts and tapestry portraits created from photographs. She chooses her medium with care, selecting between 35mm, medium and large formats to maximise the effect produced by the different qualities of the grain and the varying colour saturations.

Earlier this year her work was featured in the first ever Summer Salon at Hackney Museum, entitled Summer Salon: with a Twist. She exhibited at the Sassoon Gallery in Folkestone this summer and has also shown work in Italy and Belgium. From 14 September to 15 November she has a solo exhibition entitled simply Flowers at The Kings Head, Church Street, Wye.

Contact Liz Garnett on 01303 812 678, e-mail her at lizgarnett@aol.com or visit http://members.aol.com/lizgarnett or www.southeastopenstudios.org.uk