Books
About the Book
The imminent birth of my first child provoked an intense and challenging period of introspection. Uncertainties and fears of fatherhood encouraged me to think seriously about the boy I once was and the man I have now become. Inspired by the recollection of childhood, I returned to the haunts of my youth to search out the landmarks of my once small world. These rediscovered places and unremarkable objects began to take on an iconic and metaphorical authority and in an attempt to reassess my place in this journey through life I have striven to draw parallels between the past and the present. Mapping the everyday sights that are seen on journeys common to all, has culminated in a series of photographs concerned with the interweaving of memory and imagination and also with the act of remembering and forgetting. This visually symbolic umbilical (re)cord, like a road leading through time, is what connects my child-self to my present-self and in the future, to my unborn son.
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Dimensions Large Square 78 pgs
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Category Arts & Photography
http://www.blurb.com/b/1058920-roadworks
A retrospective of fashion photography by Robin Cowings. This work mostly spans his magazine work and personal work from the 90's.
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Dimensions Large Square 114 pgs
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Category Arts & Photography
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/6390759-lightbox
An experimental photography book derived from a solo exhibition of the same title. Existing photographic work of mine, remixed, spliced, pulled apart and reassembled into new works offering new meanings and contexts.
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Dimensions Standard Portrait 60 pgs
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Category Arts & Photography
http://www.blurb.com/b/5023083-re-mix
Protection
This book is concerned with a number of thoughts-
Firstly, they are personal and are an attempt to look back on my childhood and my own children's future. They explore the anxieties and uncertainties that every parent feels about their children's safety in this world. Secondly, they are about photography itself. In this brave new digital world where the photograph is proliferate; where surveillance is accepted as a form of state protection; where it has never been easier for the stalker to covertly photograph; where the photograph and peoples (lack of) trust in the photographer is never too far from the publics mind and the attention of the news media. My images are taken on a variety of mobile phones and employ old street photography techniques. They reference Robert Franks "New York Bus" series of images from 1958.
"Each image is caught in passing, a chance arrangement of figures that appears for a moment in front of Frank's camera before the bus moves on. They suggest a decision to abandon overall control of the image, putting himself at the mercy of circumstances".
Robert Frank: Storylines Philip Brookman (ed) Tate Publishing 2004
My images have a distinctly different aesthetic. They are taken on a mobile phone using its low quality digital camera facility. They are indistinct and often obscure the identity of the subjects through blur and pixellation. Taken from a moving car window, they possess the same elements of chance as Franks images, but carry a darker, more sinister tone. They look like stills from surveillance camera footage. Why are these Lollipop men and women being photographed? These symbols of protection and child safety have been subverted visually by the style of image capture.
Robin Cowings, 2011.
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Dimensions Standard Landscape 80 pgs
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Category Fine Art Photography