Ian Bertram - artist

I have no formal training in either photography or art, but I took my first real photographs in the early 1960s and I am still doing it now some forty years later.

I got into digital imaging by accident, trying to rescue some old and damaged slides of a trip to Morocco. I realised that the skills I was using to restore an image could equally be put to use to create new ones. I haven't stopped working at them since...

Although I start with a photographic image, I do not normally work in a photorealistic way, nor do I have a ‘signature’ style. Indeed when I start working on an image I will have only the slimmest idea of where I am going or what the outcome will be. Digital processing allows me to step backwards and forwards as I work, applying and reapplying effects, combining and recombining different variations. With a new and rapidly developing medium, there is no recognised aesthetic response to the characteristic feel of the digital image and it is exploring this aspect that most interests me.

The shape and form of the final image seems to depend as much on some intangible quality of the original source, as on the work I do on it, since apparently similar images can end up with very different outcomes. Eventually however an image does emerge – sometimes after a long and complex process, sometimes after only the briefest touch. For my part I continue to explore and continue to be surprised by what appears.

See more of my work on flickr where you can also leave comments.