Gill was born in Bristol in 1971 he had an interest in photography from a young age and collecting pond life to look at under his microscope. Stephen Gill combined conceptual and documentative photography a lot of it focusing on his local side of east end London.
Stephen gills ‘talking to ants’ series was created in East London between 2009-2013 he collected objects and litter from his local east london surroundings and put them inside the film chamber of his camera exposing the image and the materials inside and the image outside simultaneously creating what he called “incamera photograms”. The contents in the camera being underexposed making striking lines contrasting the over exposed background. The composition was left up to chance as he could not adjust the items once in the camera – alot of gills photography imploys an aspect on chance as seen with his work ‘The pillar’ where he use a censor on the camera that took pictures without him being there using it to capture images of birds.
“photography is often about control. I want to loose control.”
The assortment of objects at the forefront placed inside the camera create flat dark lines with straight and harsh edges contrasting against brighter almost overexposed naturally lit background. The colours used in the background are neutral green and earth tones whilst the plastics are often bright unnatural colours.