The Ghost in the Studio

Words by Mark Braddock
Images by Ryan Murphy

A photographer enters a studio without context.
The images he makes become a mirror.

I WAS GOING to start this with someone else’s words—a quote. It is an old habit. At Block I have spent much of my life shaping other people’s stories. Finding the words for someone else to stand behind. There is safety in that. If the words aren’t mine, neither is the risk.

But beginning this piece that way would have been another place to hide.

For most of my career I separated my creative life into two metaphoric rooms. There was the public work—Block—where creativity is commercial and made for others. Work that can be judged. Accepted. Rejected. Work that is never entirely about me.

And then there was the other work.

The private work.

During Covid that particular metaphoric room became literal.

A studio. A door. Locked.

I did not invite many people in. Not because the room was precious. Because the work was personal. If the work was rejected it would not feel like criticism of an idea or a campaign.

It would feel like criticism of me.

So the door stayed closed.

Over time I built a story to explain it. That what happened in that room was not really art. That calling myself an artist required a seriousness I had not earned. That keeping my commercial creativity and whatever happened in that studio separate was sensible.

It was a tidy story.

It was also, as tidy stories tend to be, complete bullshit.

Which is how I now find myself sitting in front of a series of photographs of that room.

Not photographs I took.

Photographs of the studio.

Photographs of my life scattered through it.

Evidence.

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