There is a line, that is the path we all walk; who we meet on that path defines how we shape the contour of each step. I prefer to think of a camera in the same way I do a pencil.

When asking Franklyn Rodgers about his work as a photographer, photography doesn’t much come into the conversation. Instead, he is likely to take you on an oral journey, one on which you have the opportunity to observe how he formulates ideas about deeper, more intangible things, things that we don’t always have names for, things to do with the human condition. As he speaks you become open to the experience because his views hint at something that has been resonating just below your own thinking.

Franklyn is on a quest to find a means through which he can describe the experiences that lie beneath the surface of every person, the tattoos of the individual that appear to be drawn on but in actual fact rise up and reveal themselves and like fingerprints are unique. He wants to know what makes us who we are and which direction we’re headed. He wants to explore how much of this life journey he the photographer and we the sitters can take together and how much of that journey he can capture on film.

Serendipity is intrinsic to his artistic practice. He is emphatic about this: ‘I don’t go out of my way to find the people in my photographs, I believe we find each other.’ At some point in the everyday course of things he will happen upon an individual whose character and characteristics suggest links to creative and cultural ideas he has been musing over. This fortuitous meeting sets a new photographic journey in motion, allowing one set of thinking (Franklyn’s) to merge with another (the stranger’s) moving them towards a mutual, creative space.

By asking such big questions he demands a lot of himself and the person he is photographing. This motivation to explore the substance of people means that something richer and more tangible is given room to exist in his portraits. Somewhere within this interaction a fusion occurs. The dialogic and photographic are transformed into a new visual language. This search for answers to the connectedness between people is tied to his explorations of cultural identity. Conversations about identity, particularly (although not exclusively) the black identity, also reside within Franklyn’s photographs.

Combined with these philosophical, rather fluid motives for taking pictures is a commitment to producing powerful visual documents. The desire to reflect some truth about each sitter is coupled with Franklyn’s rigour. The abstract makes way for a focused, photographing phase in which Franklyn will work with a designated set of tools such as natural light, mirrors, and organic materials. Through his distinctive and instinctive use of these tools he creates ancient, contemporary and perhaps even future emblems that represent each person at a particular point on their journey. His images are arresting. They are skilful, original, challenging. Franklyn is a craftsman of note. He is often asked about his photographic techniques but true to his character the response is always: ‘The question is not how I have done something but why.’

His aesthetic is one of beauty but his definition of beauty goes way beyond what is pleasing to the eye. His images are beautiful because he draws us into the detail of each person and in so doing gives us the opportunity to glimpse something of their outward appearance and inner voice, making this personal and private negotiation almost palpable.