The Artist
Bob McClelland
was born in Blackley, Manchester in 1944. On leaving Ardwick
Technical High School in 1961 he went on to pursue a career
in Organic Chemistry, a subject in which he had an interest
of long-standing, and subsequently spent many years involved
with chemistry and computing in the Research Department at ICI
Blackley.
It was in
his leisure time that he began to become actively involved with
visual art, and with photography in particular. ‘To be
engaged in an artistic activity,’ Bob maintains, ‘is
more properly to be viewed as a privilege rather than as a given
right.’
The photographs
which accompany this profile were all taken within a few miles
of where Bob once lived and worked, and are intended to illustrate
certain aspects of the Manchester environment that are, in essence,
nothing less than magical.
Bob sees
photography as being a medium which facilitates the capturing
of something that, at a particular moment in time, had existence
within the framework of what is generally accepted to be the
'real' world.
Of course,
part of the magic is intrinsically bound up with the fact that
the subjects which are photographed were in actual fact ‘found’
by the photographer, rather than having been artificially arranged
or constructed by him.
About photography
in general he believes that: ' No matter how beautiful, romantic,
or aesthetically pleasing an image may be, the essence of all
valid photography is finally conceptual in nature and documentary
in effect'.
Bob McClelland's
work is to be found in a variety of collections, both public
and private, and he has exhibited in a number of galleries and
universities in the UK and the USA.
In addition
he has written several reviews for the British Journal of
Photography and Creative Camera magazine and his
work has been featured in the Penrose Graphic Arts International
Annual.
His main
website is: http://www.marscovista.com/
Bob can
be contacted by email at: bob@marscovista.com
Bob took
early retirement in 1995 and moved to Cornwall, where he now
photographs the Cornish light and produces 'intimate' landscapes.
(website: www.kernowimages.co.uk)
