James Herner has been surrounded by artistic things all his life. If he wasn't going to start collecting them, then it was not surprising that he couldn't resist taking pictures of them. James' grandfather, Lazaar Herner, was an independent art dealer for the Hallsborough Gallery and following in the family tradition, James' father is also an independent art dealer. James' mother was an actress for the BBC in the early 1960's who also worked for the National Theatre. So the fact that James Herner should have and 'eye' for his subjects doesn't seem so strange after all, be they family members or 'real-life' imagery!

A note from the artist:

"My unconscious appreciation of art, it could be argued, is inherently a result of my family background; it certainly gave me a sense of familiarity in pursuing my own artistic aspiration, since the bedrock of artistic and cultural appreciation was nurtured from my childhood. Some of my current work, mainly "Havana Street Scenes", draws on history not only in the general sense but also in a personal way. Since being in conflict with my own humanity at times and experiencing vulnerability and loneliness, in the problematic experiences in the course of my life, I have extended this as the basis of understanding my own subject matter: Street-life in old Havana."

"Both photography and art, or more to the point one's own gaze or form of viewing (what you choose to look at and the process of identification), from a psycho-analytic perspective, say as much about one's own internal thought processes as it does the world around us!"

James Herner 2007