Pick up a perzine when you come and visit My Adopted Family and I at The Regency Town House, Hove.
My Exhibition runs from 7th Aug - 15th Aug.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
conceptual photography
Swimming in the Moonlight
Swimming in the Moonlight.
Swimming in the Moonlight is a Lensbaby project that I did a couple of years ago, but I have now rethought the images and created a story using words, images and thread - I have tried to recreate the dreamlike state of mind as we fall asleep and enter the tangled world of our unconscious minds.
The pages have been cut out of mountboard as I wanted a rigid surface. Each lensbaby image has been printed on one of two types of thin rice paper and then ripped. The exposed fibres are wonderful and look like fraying fabric and are a nod to my childhood memory of entering my dreams riding on a magic carpet. The images are sewn onto Khadi paper, an Indian cotton rag which is thick and textural. A spiders web of tangled threads has then been sewn over the images, emphassing the confusion and disjointed stories we experience when we dream.
The boards are held together with Tyvek that I printed with one of the images, much of it is now hidden by the exterior binding, so I think next time I will do an exposed spine. I particularly like the French Link Stitch I think it looks so attractive. The structure of the binding and the exterior articulated spine allow the pages to lie flat which is great for art work as you don’t lose any of your work.
Finally the outside cover was constructed out of board and I used my favourite Lokta paper which I had left over from my Locked Down Journal that I made during our first Covid Lockdown.
My Ghosts
After experiencing the idiosyncrasies of the Black and White Fujifilm FB3000B during our period of Lockdown, I decided it was time to explore the colour expired version: Fujifilm 100C. It demands a sunny, bright day at only 100 ISO and contrasting colours to enjoy its full impact. So with the Land camera’s light meter; if you can even call it that, not really working, the day being pretty dull and the film pack dating back to 2006 nothing was really going in my favour. But as ever, Polaroids and Peel-Apart film are not just about the instant photo for me, there are an abundance of treasures to be found.
Using expired colour peel-apart film produces a unique layering of image making. On my black and white peel-apart negatives The Pull, removing each film from the camera, left random, permanent light streaks interacting across many of the images. The pull on the colour negatives however, behaves in a completely different way.
Depending on the physical speed, flow and strength of the pull the negative is marked with a white substance. A purely physical fleeting act translated into a static moment of time. There is little control over the results and the outcome is purely random. Once the back layer of the negative has been bleached away a partial image emerges, not dissimilar to a photogram or a glass plate negative, but the physical action of the pull has transposed itself in an ethereal and spiritual nature. Once the front of the negatives are cleaned the marks of the human interaction will be washed away. My Ghosts express in visual terms the idea of human presence that was only momentary leaving only traces of its existence.
