64 x 64 cm C-Type Photography
1990/01

Keith Arnatt was born in Oxford and studied at Oxford School of Art and at the Royal Academy Schools in London. From a first interest in figure and portrait painting, he moved towards painting and sculpture in a style related to Minimal Art. In 1967 began to make what he called 'situations' - involving objects and people situated in landscape and indoor settings which were recorded photographically and in which the artist and his behaviour were increasingly important as subject matter. Arnatt first used photography purely for the purpose of recording otherwise ephemeral manifestations, but after a time began to think the photograph as something separate and to devise situations in order to get a photographic result. Partly through the influence of the photographer David Hurn, who had taught him at Newport College of Art, Arnatt became interested in the history and tradition of 'straight' or documentary photography and the very particular character of the photographic art.