ABOUT
BACKGROUND
I was born in 1957 in Dartford, Kent. From an early age, making and exploration were encouraged, shaped by parents of the post-war generation; optimistic, progressive, and keen to nurture creativity in their children. Art was part of daily life, but it was photography, as a new expression, that first truly excited my attention.
As a child, I watched images emerge in a darkroom under the glow of a red safelight. That process — slow, physical, and quietly magical — stayed with me. By my early teens I was photographing in black & white, learning to process film and make prints in improvised darkrooms at home. Colour later entered my work, transparencies offering a new dimension, followed by the inevitable family slide shows. Those early experiences shaped not just how I photographed, but how I learned to look.
I trained in Three-Dimensional Design, spending long hours in studios and darkrooms, drawn increasingly to the photographic print as an object in its own right. Although my professional path led into design and architecture, photography remained constant; personal, exploratory, and inseparable from the way I understood the world and my creative identity.
When digital photography began to mature, I approached it cautiously. Only when image quality matched what I valued in analogue processes did I fully embrace it. I have never been wedded to a single camera system or method; for me, the act of capture is dictated by the photographic idea rather than the equipment itself. I still return to film on occasion, not out of nostalgia, but when the nature of the composition and the intended outcome call for it.
Today, with a digital darkroom in play and my design skills close at hand, I work with images with the same care and attention I once gave to chemical photographic prints. Though the tools have changed, the impulse that first drew me into the darkroom all those years ago remains unchanged.
Photography remains, for me, not just a way of seeing, but a means of interpreting the world visually. At times, the final image becomes the least important thing that remains; it is the simple act of being there, the attention, the waiting, the moment of capture, that forms the strongest memory.
OPENPAGE is shaped by those experiences.
Chris Page