Robbie Spotswood Photographer @robbiespotswood - Tumblr Blog

During a recent project at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, London, we had the pleasure of working with a young photographer called Robbie Spotswood. He told us that he has an exhibition in …

Introverts Gaze (October 2015)

Introvert as described in the glossary of Sigmund Freud (RLE: Freud): His Personality, His Teaching and His School By Fritz Wittels (1924)

An Introverts Gaze explores voyeurism from the perspective of an introvert in their comfort zone paying homage to photographic history. Similar to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear window I photograph from the vantage point of my home outwards into the surrounding area. The focus is mainly on the neighbours who are unknown and unseen to both the photographer and the audience. Photographs are of windows, pets and the scenes presented by the surrounding architecture.

Photographing alone in my home I would photograph what I routinely gaze at on a daily basis. The neighbour’s rear window via my rear window along with people and animals out on the street through the front door and my bedroom window. Printed with a thick border and framed like a window, it draws the viewer’s gaze into an intimate space. I chose to use a high contrast black and white print to manipulate the viewer’s gaze, dodging and burning to create almost a path, highlighting details I want the audience to notice inviting the viewer’s eyes to follow my own voyeuristic gaze. The final product is a document that acts as evidence of my experience.

With reference to 1975 New Topographics and Daido Moriyama’s Stray Dog 1971 and influenced by André Kertész and the writings of Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, I invite the viewer to experience the isolation and introverted gaze through a series of photographs; and employ the psychology of phenomenology to piece together a single experience and put yourselves in the shoes of the photographer, always looking outwards from within his own territory.

Likes and dislikes of an introvert

They like voyeurism, observing people,

watching people, spying on other people.

They don’t like voyeurism, being

observed by people, being watched by

people and being spied on by people.

A Poem by Poldoyovksy