Ryan Gear says about his work – ‘I have often struggled in my attempts to define my practice and find a label that I feel to be suitable. As more time passes, however, and thus as the development of my practice continues, the fog has begun to clear, so to speak. ‘Observational Photography’, ‘Observational Photographer’. These labels I now frequently return to and contemplate, now frequently find myself identifying with. Stepping out into the world and carefully observing my surroundings, manoeuvring, I simultaneously observe myself and my inner world. This juncture of image-making and personal, inner experience perhaps being the point at which, or rather, out of which, my practice emerges.
Interested in the ambiguous nature of photographs and their communicative potential when sequenced, in my work I try to utilise this ambiguity in an attempt to in some way communicate the ambiguous nature of our human condition; to in some way capture the uncertainty that is so symptomatic of our experience of reality; to in some way give expression to the feeling of being faced with the dilemma that is being. In short, to tell a story. To traverse the extremities of self and world with photographs.’
