About me…
As a student of geology in the late 1970s, I was taken by the microscopic world of crystals, and the beauty of that memory remained with me. After graduation I returned to my first love – music – establishing a successful career as a producer and engineer working with the likes of New Order, Brian Eno, The Stone Roses, Goldfrapp, Robert Plant, Ludovico Einaudi, Sinead O’Connor and many others which you can read about here. Photography has always been a passionate hobby and my abstract textural approach is rooted in the modernist tradition: the organic rhythms of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, André Kertész’s oblique perspectives, the energy of Cornish expressionist painters such as Peter Lanyon and the bright palette of Miró, Picasso and Kandinsky. Ansel Adams’s powerful landscapes and the immediacy of his printing techniques are also a big influence.
About the work…
Someone once described it thus: “Tim Oliver’s work is a study of the subtle balance of chaos and order. His abstract photographs are mysterious yet comforting and familiar, his process unfamiliar but derived in part from everyday domestic materials. The effect is satisfying in colour and form.” To put it more plainly, I capture images with a colour and form that resonate with me on a visceral level, I don’t think there is any cerebral intellectualisation going on at a conscious level, but undoubtedly there is a sub-conscious reference to the artists and photographers that I love.
About the process
At the centre of the Micscape process is a trinocular polarising microscope. Attached to the third eyepiece is a Sony A4r camera, which in turn is connected to an Apple iMac. The subject is a prepared microscope slide using a crystalline solution or melt. A drop of mineral solution on the slide is covered by a slip to make an even thickness and left to crystallise under different environmental conditions: cold, hot, room temperature and so on. The different conditions cause the solutions to crystallise at different rates and in different ways and sizes. All the resulting colours are natural and in no way computer-enhanced. The effects are produced solely by rotating the polarising filters on the microscope as they interact with the crystals according to their type and quality. A number of other light-influencing tools on the microscope also have a bearing on the final image. The subject matter has opened up a world of image possibilities. The opportunities for experimentation are unending and immediate: looking through the kitchen cupboard has new and exciting possibilities.