The Artists Who Keep Me Looking
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No artist works in complete isolation.
Even when a photograph begins with a private experience, it is shaped by everything the artist has seen before. Other photographs, paintings, films, books, landscapes, buildings and conversations all remain somewhere in the background.
For me, looking at the work of other artists is not a way of finding a formula. It is a way of becoming more attentive.
Some artists remind me to simplify. Others encourage me to accept ambiguity. Some make me think about atmosphere, while others make me question the boundary between photography and painting.
[IMAGE INSERT 1: Original Roy Fraser landscape, without an added figure]
Suggested caption: Looking at other artists does not give me a formula. It helps me to see my own landscape more attentively.
Suggested alt text: An original quiet landscape photograph by Roy Fraser, without people in the frame.
Bruce Percy and the emotional landscape
Bruce Percy’s work has often made me think about restraint.
His landscapes can feel atmospheric and spacious, with a strong sense of quiet. The subject is not always presented as a detailed description of a place. Instead, the image seems to hold a mood, sometimes fragile, sometimes almost dreamlike.
What interests me is the way a landscape can become emotional without relying on obvious drama.
In my own work, I also find myself trying to remove anything that does not contribute to the feeling of the image. This does not mean making a photograph empty. It means giving each remaining element enough space to matter.
The influence is not in copying a composition or reproducing a particular look. It is in recognising the power of understatement.
Hengki Koentjoro and the language of black and white
Hengki Koentjoro’s black-and-white photographs have encouraged many photographers to think differently about mist, negative space and the boundary between visibility and disappearance. His images often suggest that the landscape does not need to be fully described in order to be felt.
This is close to one of my own recurring concerns. I am interested in what happens when the landscape is reduced to a few essential forms, when detail gives way to atmosphere and the photograph begins to approach abstraction.
The difference is that every artist brings a different history and a different relationship with place. I do not want to imitate Hengki’s images. I want to learn from the questions they raise for me.
How little can be shown while still leaving something behind? How much can atmosphere carry? When does a recognisable landscape become something more inward and ambiguous?
[IMAGE INSERT 2: Original Roy Fraser shoreline or water study, without a person]
Suggested caption: Reduction can remove information while leaving the emotional presence of a place intact.
Suggested alt text: An original black-and-white study of water and atmosphere by Roy Fraser, without a figure.
John Folsom and the space between photography and painting
John Folsom’s work interests me for another reason.
His photographs can have a painterly quality, with attention to surface, layering, colour and the physical character of the image. They seem to exist between observation and transformation.
This reminds me that photography does not have to remain confined to a narrow idea of description. A photograph can begin with a real place and still become something subjective, tactile and interpretive.
My own work is often quieter and more reduced, but I recognise the desire to move beyond simply showing what was there. The photograph can become a way of translating an experience rather than documenting it.
That distinction is important to me. I am not trying to make a perfect record of a shoreline. I am trying to find the form that best expresses what it felt like to stand there.
Influence is not imitation
There is a difference between being influenced by an artist and trying to reproduce their work.
Imitation stays on the surface. It borrows the visible qualities of another artist’s images without understanding the deeper reason those qualities exist.
Influence is more generous and more difficult. It asks what has moved us, what has unsettled us and what has made us look again.
It also requires distance.
I can admire an artist’s use of fog without making fog the centre of my own work. I can respond to another artist’s minimal compositions without copying their arrangements. I can be interested in painterly surfaces while remaining faithful to the particular way I experience the landscape.
The goal is not to hide our influences. No artist can do that completely. The goal is to transform them through our own attention.
Why artists need to look at other artists
Looking at other work helps me escape habit.
When I photograph regularly, I can begin to repeat myself without noticing. I return to similar subjects, similar distances and similar decisions. Other artists interrupt that routine.
They show me another way of seeing.
Sometimes this happens through admiration. Sometimes it happens through disagreement. A work may make me realise what I do not want to pursue, and that can be just as useful.
The important thing is to remain curious.
I want my photographs to carry my own presence, but I do not want that to mean closing myself off from the wider history of image-making. Photography is part of a much larger conversation, one that includes painting, poetry, cinema, sculpture and the experience of being in the world.
[IMAGE INSERT 3: Original Roy Fraser image showing texture, tonal simplicity or painterly atmosphere]
Suggested caption: The photograph remains my own, but it is part of a much larger conversation about looking.
Suggested alt text: An original atmospheric landscape photograph by Roy Fraser showing quiet tones and painterly texture.
The conversation continues
When I look at the work of Bruce Percy, Hengki Koentjoro and John Folsom, I do not see instructions for how my photographs should look.
I see invitations to look more carefully.
Their work reminds me that silence can be active, that a landscape can hold emotion without a visible event, and that a photograph can move between reality and interpretation.
Those are not conclusions. They are questions I carry with me when I go out with my camera.
The next photograph may not resemble the work of any of these artists. I hope it does not.
But perhaps it will carry something of the same willingness to slow down, to remove what is unnecessary and to leave room for the viewer.
Further looking
If you would like to spend more time with the artists mentioned here, I will add links to their official websites below.
The artists mentioned here are discussed as part of a personal creative conversation. Their images are not reproduced in this article.