Collection: David Winston

The photographer, David Winston, was born in Los Angeles. He studied film and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and moved to the UK in 1970. He travels extensively with his camera. Like many artists before him, he has been drawn to the city of Venice as a constant source of inspiration and has over the last 6 years, divided his time between Venice and the UK.

He also has worked for 50 years as a restorer of musical instruments and is a holder of a Royal Warrant to HM the King.

With his photography he has sought ways to work beyond the constraints of modern digital imagery. This has led him to both look back to the earliest photographic processes and also develop his own alternative ways of producing a photographic image.

His painterly use of the photographic medium is full of emotion and imagination, displaying the palette of a storyteller.

David was the recipient of the Bronze Medal in the Photographer of the Year Award, 2024.

The two major elements of magic and emotion are the driving forces behind my photography.

When the photographic process was first invented, people were amazed, but also alarmed and frightened by the ability to freeze time and capture light onto paper. Now with the development of digital photography it is perceived as almost a throw-away process and as a result much of the original magic is lost. I aim to bring that magic back through the use of both early 19th Century and my own experimental development processes. I do little digital manipulation of images and prefer the painterly and unpredictable results that happen in the development stage.

Over the last 6 years, I have spent half my time in Venice, being drawn to this magical city as a constant source of inspiration. Venice at night is wonderfully atmospheric, when the tourists go home and the city returns to itself. In my Venice Nocturnes Series, I take inspiration from the musical form of the Nocturne, which is simply a suggestion of a mood. Then of course there is Carnevale di Venezia which is a particularly special time when the creative imagination is given free rein. The wonderful explosion of imagination against the backdrop of Venice is like a tableau of visions from the past. Behind every mask is a secret and a story. Sometimes we can get a clue from the eyes—they are often a surprise, at odds with the mask, or sometimes they cannot be seen and the story becomes even more complex.

I work a lot with various multiple exposure techniques. This technique does not use a special development process but does use an unconventional photographic technique. Multiple rapid images are taken of a moving object and combined in one image leaving trails of the moving object as it passes through the framed area.

Photography is generally a single moment—a split second frozen in time, but there is a different impression when consecutive moments are combined, a myriad of movements and expressions that tell us more of the story, different emotions, different movements , different viewpoints, all combine into unique shapes as the paths may intersect those of others which have just previously occupied the same space.

These images are made in camera and I have no control over the paths that people or moving objects may take. The people become actors in the play, while chance meetings and the intersection of strangers join to make an image unseen by those who have created it.

I am less interested in a photo which is an exact representation, but instead want to portray a more pictorial and emotional image. My process of choice is the 19th Century Gum Bichromate process. The mystery and alchemy of this complicated process is very much a cross between painting and photography. I see the certainty and predictability of the modern digital process as a limitation, often making lifeless images. In the Gum Bichromate process, watercolour pigments are mixed with photo sensitive chemicals and applied to watercolour paper prior to exposure. Each print is unique. Everything makes a difference, how it is applied, the choice of paper, the choice of pigment, the pigment density and transparency all matter. One literally has an artist’s palette at their disposal and the unpredictability of the result is magic.