Influences for Martin Smith

Documentary - very clearly a form of documenting, as in one of the early uses of photography to record slum life, war, exotic or archelogical features of other countries and so on. But here Smith is documenting himself through places he knew.



Street photography, late 1960s (such as Gary Winogrand) - as in Smith's work features streets, but not in the sense that feature street life caught with spontaneity. So in this sense he's more like Eugene Atget documenting his Parisian streets all emptied of people. But, unike Atget, Smith doesn't emphasise depth or nostalgia.

Revealing internal landscapes - but not by including himself in the image, but often in the text.

Post-modern - he appropriates contemporary images and lyrics. He also portrays something real, but its not realism. There's a narrative, but not one that's set up in the image. He destroys the illusion of perspective so important to the history of Western art.

I'm particularly interested in him, not as a major, but an emerging artist who does not stay comfortably within a single artistic category. And, as a postmodern artist, I'm particularly impressed by his serious reflective ideas rather than merely just critiquing modernity.