The background

The following is from a piece of text that I had in my studio during my assessment to be my voice that guided the assessors to the research I had carried out over the final semester that was oure practice compared to semester 2 which became pure dissertation...

86 black bin liners, over 100 metres of parcel tape, 10 rolls of black insulating tape, 3 weeks, and over 400 digital images…

Photographic research: 35mm film (black and white and colour), Holga medium format plastic camera, 4x4 pinhole camera, modified Kodak Brownie, digital camera, and finally the camera obscura.

Exploring the themes of the Art of Mourning in the use of materials related: bone ash, hair, dust, rice flour, light

Use of different grains- the grain of paper, a grain of rice, the grain of the photograph

Dust breeding traces… Drawing with light to create shadows cast off my body/ objects

Sally Mann photographer and aesthetics,What Remains, with images of traces of an existence as well as the decay process of death, not as something morbid, but as ghostly revitalisation. Bodies that return to the earth to create a new life, as well as new knowledge.

The plates of duagerrotypes with the image beyond the surface it lies on, it is beyond or floating in front of.

Interacting inside the body of a camera: the camera as a collecting chamber to give birth to the image; like the internal womb.

Forcing the digital camera close to the point of failure, where it is at its limits to reading the limited available light. 35mm film cameras shutter speeds were to fast, and rendered blank film. The Kodak brownie (modified to take 120 film rather than 116) successfully rendered some images due to its ‘B’ setting, allowing for an open aperture. The pinhole camera produces an image at a minimum of 10 hours, however, night will fall at some point…

Trace drawings on rice paper with ink, drawn with brushes made of my own hair. A material that is always dead and yet continues to produce. The ‘hairbrushes’ trace with their own trace a delicate line of the moving image of the obscura.

The body as a surface to receive an image is whitened to intensify its potential as a blank canvas. This is created with the use of clay mud, talc and rice flour; a nod towards the bone china ceramics and the paper grain.

Experimenting with different production techniques: research into photograms, salt printing, acrylic gel inkjet transfers, screenprinting. To produce an image that would evoke the memory of the obscura- something transferred that is created through reversal, imprinting, an echo, not solid…

Additional work includes collaboration with Jonathon Baxter’s Invitation to Exchange, where through the passing of objects, our ‘beings’ become mixed and identity is blurred in appearance. A trance like state is issued, where no communication occurs. Items of clothing are exchanged, as if I am given licencse to become another. The opportunity for play is exploited, and through this interaction with another is very much a different contrast when ‘performing’ alone to light. The same trance like state occurs but you become less aware of yourself as a person. Stripped of an appearance as you cannot see yourself, only the image.