My childhood delight in reading and a physical book must have been the awakening stimulus for my career as an artist and though my training as an engineer may have seemed to lead me away from my present life I note my first job was in the team designing two of the first photo-typesetters — the Linotron 505 and the Harris Intertype FotoSetter. This built on my school days' experience of hand composing lead type for a treadle driven 14-inch ‘Arab’ press.
This marriage of the digital computer and the optical composition chain educated me in the details of hyphenation and page design. I became a lifelong convert to Donald Knuth's TeX software for its resolute commitment to the beauty of the printed page.
In the preparation of any book – whether for my own authorship or in a project joined with fellow artists – I strive for these qualities of beauty and the generosity of the printed book as a potential gift.
As to my practice as an artist and photographer, I experience a great deal of isolation in the countryside where I live: I have resolved to contradict this isolation in this process of building community with artists worldwide who share my interests and to use some of my resources in the cost of production. I rationalise this to myself when I remark that any over-run in the printing still takes up much less physical space than framed photographs or sculpture.