Nick Antony Halstead (born in London, 1981) is a self-taught photographer currently residing in Birmingham, UK. His work is contemplative and deliberate, and focused on capturing the emotive qualities of his surroundings.
Nick's work has been exhibited in Birmingham, featured in Another Place and Format Magazines, and published in Volume 14 of Subjectively Objective's Mini Monograph series.
"If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?"
Don Juan de Matus, in Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda.
Very soon, I will be moving away from the city in which I've lived for thirty three years. Preparation for this action has consumed almost all of my energy for the past three years. The little that has been left has been devoted to photographing my surroundings. My reasons for doing this have never been clear cut. The original intent behind the act of making a photograph always turns out to be illusory. I've come to realise that my work reflects a subconscious process of documenting moments, not to hold on to them, but to provide an opportunity to discard them.
In all my work, I am attempting to focus on the omnipresent reality. The deep seated fabric that lies beneath the illusion of linear time. My work is not an attempt to evade responsibility for anything in the past. It is a conduit through which I am able to understand, accept, and then break the relational concepts which bind me into something that is known, or defined through speculation.
The subjective nature of photographic work allows me to redefine consensus interpretations. Finding hope and spirit where others might see loss and confusion. This reformulation of meaning affirms the notion that we ourselves can escape the definitions and assumptions that limit our freedom.
