The Shot I Never Forgot
‘The Shot I Never Forgot’ is an Arts Council funded project in which participating artists were invited to share a photograph that has remained in their mind since they shot it along with the story behind its creation. Most of the artists instinctively knew which image they should share, sometimes because it was poignant, sometimes because of its personal significance or simply because it is a great photograph.
As photographers, we shoot many more images than ever see the light of day, often including fabulous stand alone pictures – shot on instinct – whilst making work for another project. Because these single images do not fit the brief, they sit gathering dust in an ever-growing archive. The Shot I Never Forgot is a chance for some of these images to be presented in their own right, for others to enjoy; a platform to enable some of these memorable photographs to be seen for the first time.
This project began in February 2013 and culminated in an exhibition and publication, held during the Brighton photo Fringe 2014. Since then, it has been lying dormant, ocassionally being dusted off to receive some new submissions!
John House, February 2018
Andre Lichtenberg
‘Untitled from The Full Moon Series’ 2010 "This image represents a change in direction in my personal work, a new beginning in my full moon project. The work was created on a warm summer’s night in 2010 in a field somewhere between New Heaven and Eastbourne in the South East coast of UK. This is a remote location situated between the rail tracks and the beach, it’s mainly a flat-ish land with a low vegetation and some concrete pathways (which apparently were built by the army during the World War II to be able to take heavy equipment and tanks near the beach). The image marks the birth of the Licht series which has been published and exhibited widely since. Up until this point my full moon project was mainly about the landscape itself, focussing on locations being illuminated by the soft, romantic and mysterious moonlight. I remember that the project was already evolving at the point, with the exposures getting much longer (playing with the idea of representing a night as if it was a day) and myself paying more attention to the thought process during the time the exposure was being made. Working at night in quiet and remote locations gets your brain going in unusual directions, The process can become quite meditative and self-reflective. Suddenly the idea came that instead of waiting behind the tripod, I should become part of the photograph, so I started interacting with the landscape, gently painting it with light and leaving clues of my own trace as I moved through the frame. After seeing the result of the first test I decided I had created something I needed to explore further. The project, “Licht series”, has evolved further from that initial point and became slightly more polished and controlled, which somehow made me exclude this image from the series in the final edit."
