Following a 15-year break from photography, Barry Eaglestone rediscovered his love for the medium, attracted by the emotional impact of colour, and its ability to transform the ordinary into something uplifting, surprising and beautiful. We caught up to find out more, as his new show opens in London.
INTERVIEW: TERRY HOPE IMAGES: BARRY EAGLESTONE
SOMETIMES BEING IMMERSED in the middle of photography on a relentless schedule can be wearing, and when that happens the only option could be to turn and walk away. For Barry Eaglestone it all got a little too much to cope with, given that he was heavily involved in the corporate world, while his demanding self-set photo assignments were seeing him travelling widely to far-flung destinations such as Nepal, Tibet, Syria, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan.
“I was basically following the Silk Road,” he recalls, “and at the time I was travelling the internet wasn’t as established as it is now, and so the pictures I was taking were my way of sharing my experience with others when I returned. I had a website built to showcase the work, and because the market was less crowded then than it is now this got noticed, and it was voted as being amongst the top ten of new websites.
“That got me plenty of attention, but it also put pressure on to keep adding more work. Eventually I became disillusioned by the fact that I was so busy looking for photographs that I was missing actually looking properly at the amazing places I was visiting. It eventually led to me putting down my camera and taking a complete break from the medium.”
It was a step away that was to last for a full fifteen years, but slowly but surely Barry found his way back to a craft that had once meant so much to him. “The catalyst for me was getting a smartphone that featured a reasonably good camera,” he recalls. “That got me back in the groove, and from there I acquired a better-quality compact camera and then moved up to a Fujifilm XT-50 mirrorless camera and a selection of lenses.
“Despite Covid coming along and interrupting things I never looked back. In terms of an ongoing theme I could explore, I found myself motivated by colour, which comes from a love for art, particularly abstract paintings. I was also struck by a quote from David Hockney, one of my main influences, who declared ‘colour is a joyful thing.’ That phrase stuck with me, and helped to give me a direction for my work.”
BELOW: ‘Castello(1) Venice’ A1 £850 framed (on Hahnemuhle cotton rag)
Estudio EA