Welcome to The Reading Room, where you can read more about the current exhibition - including the artist's statement(s) of intent, development and design timeline, and accompanying research.
Q&A Transcripts and Audio Commentaries are also available here.
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I'd love to hear more about how Personal Sanctuary made you feel. Feel free to post some thoughts here. Submitted thoughts are anonymous and may be shared in Visitor's Thoughts below.
Aftermorn
Aftermorn is a feeling - somewhere between 9am and 10.30, perhaps on the cusp of autumn.
With this project, I really wanted to capture a stimulating blend of a sleepy society; adjusting and awakening to the day ahead, which I hope are, a shared set of feelings in and amongst us all.
Aftermorn came about by chance really - and I’m kind of glad it did, for the reasons I explain. After I finished secondary school, I was so sure I wanted to start taking pictures in the summer and autumn that followed and I soon found myself repeating that in the five years that would come after. They were Random photographs, some more considered than others (either by their composition or a particularly memorable or unrepeatable moment); but really they were random because there was no impetus to do the project. It was not a commission or a particular piece of work I actively set out a timeline for - and for me that’s what I would constitute something as being ‘random’, not in terms of the theme(s) as such in this case. The final series is the product of thinking about where my friends and family were literally and were going, happening to be in places (alone or with others), and the moments in between the highs and lows of my time at film school.
In the production stage I chose to either slightly over (or under) expose each image to start a precedent for my colour corrections and detail adjustments in post. This was the foundation steps in establishing a dual-purpose bleariness; to invoke a sense of awakening I felt when taking these pictures, and one which I imagined would be shared by the subjects in the places, locations and scenes depicted. This bleariness I mention whilst stemming from feelings of blurriness or one’s own weariness is perhaps outdone by the sense of enthusiasm, purpose or urgency one has at the start of the working day. I wanted to show these two juxtaposing yet entirely fluid feelings, which perhaps in these important ninety minutes are not always obvious or considered at the time.
The principles I had considered for the theme of this shoot (which straddled a few years), helped me to hone in on these themes latterly in post-production. The photographs were edited with a few different sets of considerations dependent on the type of composition. Some of the earliest photographs in the series were demonstrably ‘minimalist’ in the way they were composed; or seemed to evoke such a feeling at least - because the contents of the image were not cluttered in terms of the shapes, textures or subjects (or lack thereof) shown. You may notice that the images which depict silhouettes of houses, other kinds of buildings or flora and fauna may only decorate the edges of a picture only to focus on something else or amongst it. The eyes should lead to the middle or bottom third of the image in most instances; because of a warm vignette which produces a kind of circular glow with a light that emanates from or around the primary area of interest in the photograph. This might be the sombre looking fence in Memory Fence or the tip of a house peeking behind a hedge in Hidey House.
Conversely, other photographs in the series have a large or juxtaposing presence in the foreground - in relation to or at odds with the background; which in some cases covered as much as three quarters of the image such as the Nice, France or Harrow and North West London sub-sets. You might see I’m particularly fascinated by leading lines and compositions such as in Barnet Stadium or Parental Dreaming which draws the viewer far away from the point of view of the photographer. Relationships between the subjects in the foreground and background do not always have to be complementary and invariably they are always the more interesting when they are not.
As for the colour scheme: most, if not all, of the images have a naturally occurring dominant colour; either a pastel pink or a faded shade of gold - or both. Most of these were just captured by chance, and the relationship between these colours and the feelings I was aiming to evoke in Aftermorn I only really considered to be coincidental until I edited the colours. This was so that the images looked a bit more gently washed away or inverted, to create the kinds of effects seen in natural photo-aging - whereby the original photo slowly oxidises over time which produces a slight discolouration of photographs in the end, even if archived correctly. These changing colours, like the seasons, are inevitable anyway; and are perhaps more aggravated these days by our increasingly polluted atmosphere - a bit of a tangent which I shan’t elaborate on here.
Going back to the main themes, I think the ‘faded’ nature of the photographs in this series, taking into account the inversions of a previously aggressive hue in post, and introducing new pastel-orientated colour casts - really reminds us of a gentler time. I’m not speaking about an era or a period of time, although perhaps relevant too, but rather a gentler time in one’s own day where we’re attuning our senses to the things around us: at home, in our local neighbourhood and in the wider environment. Paying attention to those moments are crucial in starting off our day in the ‘right’ way for whatever it is we’re doing, and there’s something to be said about this period of time and how one uses it - something I call productive melancholy, which doesn’t need to be sad or pensive as the latter word in that phrase suggests. I find the morning-thought process to be exactly this juxtaposition.
In A Dark Haze
All around us exists these crevices of space and information, moving from a space we know into a space we don’t know; losing ourselves In A Dark Haze.
All around us are these dark, lofty spaces - whether they linger (or in fact are); ceilings, basements, staircases and stairwells, windows and corridors or simply the spaces we walk near to. There is a distinctively solemn and yet perplexing feeling about these spaces; what do they represent? Some of them need not a second thought, but others on the contrary harbour an imperceptible quality about them. This series aims to capture what lingers in the darkness and our relation to different kinds of dark spaces; using public, domestic and private spaces.
In A Dark Haze started when I was primitively experimenting with capturing high ISO images in low-light settings - the resultant images were ‘grainy’ and had slightly ‘animated’ quality about them. In analog photography ‘ISO’ refers to the speed of the film in the camera in regards to how sensitive it is to light, not to be confused with Shutter Speed though very much related, as a key component in the exposure triangle. In the digital realm, the photographs I captured were ‘noisy’ in that the camera compensates for the lack of light by randomly approximating and adding digital artefacts to try to make sense of (‘expose’) the darkest parts of the frame. I really enjoyed the effect this created and thus began to experiment further in different scenarios over an extended period of time.
One would be quick to assume that the subject matter carries the implication that night photography was mostly employed, when in fact this was the complete opposite of my primary intention. To me at least, In the pursuit of my practice, I found that portraying darkness from an image sourced in broad daylight with some details exaggerated in otherwise ordinary scenarios created ulterior meanings about the photograph.
In post-production, I discovered lowering parts of the image’s exposure values whilst simultaneously increasing some of the highlight values rendered some subject’s expressions invisible. They became silhouettes. The subject’s overall body language and expression; symbolic of their intentions in a particular moment (whether they were aware of the photo being taken or not) could no longer be understood. Thus, the photograph’s previously held hallmarks of universality dissipate in a flash and the photographs begin to take on somewhat of an abstract form which provides room for the viewer to interpret the events as they wish.
A bi-product of what was really ‘trial and error’ came in the form of the light changing in such a way that the viewer has difficulty with identifying (or being no longer able to identify) the time of day or night. This was one of the qualities I was most interested in pursuing; not to confuse the viewer but rather to allow them to begin consciously making sense of the photograph’s composition - which was more apparent in the black & white photographs in the series. This experimentation of the stark contrasts between light and darkness are very rooted in the advent of image production itself and are still used today by both commercial and underground photographers experimenting in the abstract, or with abstract approaches and ideas to photography.
Upness
As a society we’re so innately focussed on moving forward, looking ahead - but, we often forget to look up, and marvel at the pillars of society.
I felt that the implications of Upness were indeed a reflection of my personal definition of ambition, at different points in my life growing up, whatever that meant then and whatever it means now.
Wandering around the streets of London, idle faces; commuters, holidaymakers, some families; roam the streets and dart across them to get somewhere. Getting somewhere seems to be primary motivation for anyone to be in London - whether that’s getting somewhere quite literally from A to B or advancing themselves personally, professionally or indeed financially. With Upness, I intended to recognise the, in my opinion little-taken, curious perspectives of city wanderers as they look at the grandiose buildings and institutions which tower above them.
In some ways the compositions in the series give some of the structures and buildings a monolithic quality - huge, beastly, ominous and intimidating perhaps. There is a perceived duality in this, on the one hand we marvel at them, like we would a good painting, for a fleeting moment but on the other hand our sense of personal ambition is reflected in the sheer scale of buildings. Whilst a building may be primarily associated with its purpose - be that a landmark, place of work or hospitality; buildings by their very design and scale, can and often do represent structures of wealth, power, political prowess or some kind of societal clout. The higher the building, the more significant its influence in the immediate radius of it, perhaps.
In this series, I was particularly interested in this duality where we look up at structures with curiosity and determination whilst also addressing concerns about the subconscious forces of simultaneous internal-externalised capitalism at play. I went into this particular project with cautious optimism.
As for how I went about composing, capturing and editing the photographs to the final forms they take in the series - I wanted to offset the viewer’s eyeline from the conventions which more traditional forms of composition, and their rules, create. Most of the images contain (a part or a whole of) a building, but contain a significant amount of negative space (the space around and between a subject). With this, I wanted to subvert the building’s structural dominance in each location by only depicting a part of it; usually with the backdrop of a blue or overcast sky. The resultant effect is one where the viewer is placed at the very side or foot of a building looking upwards; whilst the scale and proportions of the building have been warped or cut off. The sky, which dominates most of the negative space in the image series instills a sense of wonderment. This allows the viewer to become more comfortable in the inherently nebulous and simultaneously exciting qualities of (desiring) ambition whilst also acknowledging the need to be grounded (or made aware) by the internal and literal structures that are encountered in life itself.
Visitor's Thoughts
Thoughts on the exhibition will begin to populate here.