Stephen Tamiesie image.

I knew instantly that Stephen Tamiesie was young, full of energy and a big fan of Richard Misrach. Perhaps I seen him as a younger version of myself, or myself ten years ago.
The first thing I noticed was The Salton Sea, which has to be the most photographed place in California, this was a dead give away as the things I photographed some time ago are either not there or decayed even further. The second was the cleaness of the images, and the third, the overall style and heavy influence of those that have gone before. Nothing wrong with any of this, but the images tend to be on the cusp of being too clean and loosing a lot of there character. I have a real personal issue with the 'over cleansing' of decaying subject matter, and often think 'Why on earth photograph it if your going to photo shop it into something else' . These images are far from original, but then again who is these days. Having said that they are certainly beautiful. But I've seen it all time and time again.
I always give this kind of work a bit of a hard time probably because its where the kind of work I produce is heading. This clean, perfect images of places that look like cesspit's in the flesh are what people expect these days, but its a contradiction to the likes of me.
Re-photographed. Re-worked. Re-Done.