Rob Carter's ‘Travelling Still’ break down complex landscapes into simple forms of light, which appear to travel across the page. Their luscious colours and distinct sense of movement certainly make for visually eye-catching photographs.
Yet, what is most impressive about the Travelling Still, is despite being almost purely abstract in form, the images have the remarkable ability to capture the essence of a place - from its very location, right down to the time of day.

Traditionally, photography has been a medium known for its unique ability to capture fine detail and realism. However, Carter’s concerns are very much contrary to this idea. Much like an Impressionist painter, he is more interested in our sense of a landscape, rather than the details of it. To experience his ‘Travelling Still’s is to awaken one’s senses to pure movement and light in a form of abstraction not often found in photography. As if positioned at the window of a car, viewers are sent speeding through landscapes with light flashing horizontally across the photograph, breaking down the scene into abstracted forms that are drenched in colour.

The secret to creating this effect is Carter's combined use of a revolving lens camera, with a slow shutter speed, to produce a long exposure landscape. This process ultimately blurs the ground, sky, and objects in front of the lens, into almost pure abstract forms, whilst retaining a distinctive sense of movement. Carter describes his technique as somewhat random and unpredictable. Without digital manipulation, he is never quite aware how each print will turn out, using several reels of film before selecting a single image for this series.

‘Travelling Still’ will take viewers on a journey around the world, including images from Mexico, Sardinia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Zanzibar, France, Holland and Ireland. Landscapes, seascapes, night cityscapes, and sunsets reveal themselves through the merging of colours. In Travelling Still, Xpu-ha Beach, Mexico, the hazy white-ish greens in the foreground blur into a deeper turquoise horizon, followed by layers of darker and darker blues. While the forms are essentially abstract, one can still sense the clarity of the shallow ocean water, getting deeper towards the horizon, before disappearing against a fading sky that appears on the verge of becoming night. By eliminating the details, viewers are encouraged to use their senses to translate these studies of light back into landscapes - and so we meditate upon them, over and over again. As with most abstract art, these works can be simultaneously challenging, and wonderfully simple.

‘Travelling Still’ is an ongoing series for Rob Carter, as he continues to not only explore different landscapes of the world, but also constantly experiment with his technique. Not all of his works are pure abstraction for example, and in some photographs there are moments of clarity where forms such as autumn trees, neon signs, or ocean waves, are revealed to us. In works such as Westonbirt Arboretum I (and II & III), Carter leaves details of the landscape untouched by the blurred effects of the revolving camera. These photographs give the sense of a painted landscape that has been stretched or smudged in either direction off the page, leaving just one central point intact. Similarly, with his night cityscapes of Tokyo, the lights and signs of the buildings are blurred, but still vaguely comprehensible and in some cases, even readable. In this way Travelling Stills can be considered as ongoing artistic studies, where Carter is continuing to adapt his process - the movement of the rotating lens, and the length of exposure - to find different ways to capture the illusion of movement.

Rob Carter’s Travelling Still reveals to us a whole new way of seeing and interpreting the world. This series of unique photographs illustrates that details of a landscape are not always required to tell the whole story. In fact, abstract elements such as light, colour, or movement, can reveal just as much about the places that Carter has explored, as being right there with him.

Pieces from the Travelling Still series are available from $1380.00 and you can find all the current available print editions in the photographic series here.