Paul Kašpar
Paul grew up in Croydon and has since spent half a lifetime teaching film and documentary theory and production in South Dorset, stretching back to the analogue 1980s, before recently moving to Bath via time in Brighton during lockdown. His father was a refugee from Prague, and he grew to appreciate the strong vein of Czech surrealism in film and photography, as well as 1930s experimentation in Mass Observation and surrealism.
In the last ten years he rekindled his love of shooting 35mm and medium format, searching out vintage cameras and lenses for experimentation, then developing negatives at home and scanning into Photoshop for post-production as a kind of hybrid analogue/digital process. Through this period, certain themes and styles have developed and recurred: people isolated in landscapes or cityscapes; strange juxtapositions often found in markets, car boot sales and on the streets; mixing animate and inanimate. Using old, expired film stocks, and often shooting directly into sunlight, images are often grainy, with strong shadows, contrasts and patterned shapes. Paul also shoots on full-frame digital, often adapting and using vintage lenses as old as he is.