Andy Taylor Smith has a unique, highly stylised approach to photography. Since an early age he has been fascinated by the odd, the surreal and the sublime and this is illustrated in the work he makes today. Light features heavily in Taylor Smith’s photographs, giving them a staged, cinematic sense. He states: “I never tire to watch light, how it shapes and defines an object; the subtleties and peculiarities which can suddenly reveal something odd and surreal in an otherwise familiar subject.” When making decisions about composition, Taylor Smith mentally strips the image back to its simplest and most graphic form in an attempt to make the finished photograph uncomplicated and unconventional. He endeavors to find beauty in everything no matter how banal or ugly it may be to others. This can be seen in landscapes such as ‘Blue 1’ and the two ‘Krafla’ works; the carefully framed images of vast desolate spaces somehow give a sense of optimism and hope, when the subject matter could suggest negativities such as loneliness or emptiness.

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