El Timbo’s photographic work was inspired by the images he saw through the lens of his cameras. However, he then frequently used these photographic images as the raw material from which he created composite images.
Manually processed slide sandwiches
Back in the 1990s, he did this manually, via his own processing dark room, where he manually, and painstakingly assembled hundreds of composite slide “sandwiches”, based on the “cibachrome” processing technique. These were often dark and mysterious, but also with emerging vibrant colours. They drew out original new perceptions, via strange – and often surprising or even clashing – visual juxtapositions. Ironically, in order to present these in this site, it will be necessary to scan and represent them digitally.
Digitally processed work
After moving to Y Bermo (Barmouth) around 2003, Timbo began experimenting digitally for a medium to create his composite photographic images. Using various old, outdated and/or free-to-user technologies (hardware and software), he painstakingly devised his own methodologies. This approach was typically Timbo. He did things his way – or, if you like, in ways that he (and maybe only he?) could understand-. There were many bumps along the way, nevertheless, his output was prolific.
These digitally processed images fall into two general categories:
- Digital composites – Using digital methods to renew the creative impulse behind Timbo’s manually processed slide sandwiches experiments of the 1980s and 1990s
- Digitally treated compositions – Moving towards the 2020s, Timbo started experimenting with digitally altered landscapes and compositions, for instance by adding granular effects, by ‘greying out’ the image or, in some cases, reintroducing ‘spots’ of digital colour – often in pastel shades. This had the effect first of ‘cleansing’ the image, before enhancing it with small coloured detail. In a strange way, this last phase of images seem to reflect earlier techniques of manually touching up with colour in early black and white analogue photography. This development may have reflected Tim’s dual fascinations with experimentation in photographic imagery and with the early evolution of photographic techniques – a major theme of his 1980s Masters critical theory dissertation on Julia Margaret Cameron.
