John H Moody

Living In The Real World

I live in Port Glasgow. A small corner of the real world, tucked away beside the southern shores of the Clyde Estuary. The photograph spread above these words is a view from my bedroom window. I have taken many photographs from this window over the last 25 years. Each photograph is diferent from the previous one. Light, colour, texture change constantly. I record these changes obsessively. Here is a paradox. The camera protects me from the real world. I freeze the changes I observe day-by-day and then process them. This is easy these days when this processing involves a small digital device which computes; my image stored as ‘pixels’ on a glowing screen. When I began taking these photographs my images were stored on ‘film’, and processed with chemicals. Slow and laborious, days and weeks to complete, instead of minutes.

The view from the bedroom window is my picture. I control it absolutely. It becomes my illusion.

The subjects scattered across this website represent my experience of living in this very small corner named Inverclyde. The communities of Port Glasgow, Greenock, Gourock and a few small villages lie in a conventionally beautiful corner of Scotland’s west coast, gazing out over the Highlands from the banks of the Clyde. Paradoxically again this community living within this chocolate box landscape is one with its share deprivation, some poverty, ill health and a smidgin of old fashioned parochialism.

It is a world I used to engage with constantly. Now I observe.

I hope you find something of interest somewhere on on my website. Please help yourself.

Portfolio