The meaning of Mayhall

As a control freak I find the idea of allowing other people to decide what my pictures are about more than a little uncomfortable. I’ve met ‘other people’, and frankly I don’t trust them to come to the right conclusions without some heavy-handed guidance. I work hard to make sure the viewer sees the right things first in my pictures, and that the subject is so obvious even a fool would be able to determine what it is I am screaming at them to see.

Not everyone has the same psychotic requirement for a unified view of what their work means – Oliver Mayhall is one of those art photographers who is happy for other people to make up their own mind and have their own free-range opinions. In my head, meaning is meaning; but in Oliver’s, meaning is fluid and he embraces the fact that people will have alternative takes on his message.

‘Sometimes I get comments on my work where people have a completely different view on what it means. For me that’s really cool. I want people to make their own judgement and interpretations of meaning. That people are making up their own interpretations makes it all the more interesting. I took a picture of my girlfriend on holiday that I posted on Instagram. In the picture she’s in the sea and waving her hands above the water. It was a very