statement...

Statement:

Throughout this project I have investigated photography as a medium that explores space; photography's depiction of it and our interaction with it.  I have developed a piece of work that stemmed from an initial will to distort what was being photographed by overlapping sequential images. This overlapping aesthetically brings images together building up an almost rhythmical nature to the images, where they overlap can almost be read as a beat on a drum, it also physically joins these separate 'views' up displacing a normal, separate and photographed view of the world. On a more metaphorical level the overlapping co-insides with less photographic way of seeing the world, it becomes similar to how we view our world in reality; as a series of fragmented moments joined into one long memory, the separate becoming the one in the mind. This ability to overlap images became my starting point for my investigation into space and its identity within photography.

To create these 'multiple exposures' I used an old brownie camera one which is instrumental to photography's development as a media for the masses. My will to use this camera developed because of my passion for the basic primitive natures of photography. The camera is almost a pinhole device capturing the outside world with a fixed aperture and shutter speed. This always gave my images a sense of the unknown and the camera a chance to become its own mediator in the work; the images were never entirely subjective.  The nature of my photographing had to change because of this camera, I became much more happy to let it do the work leaning on its attributes ad a point and shoot medium. However I also began to investigate the performative aspects  of my shooting and the way I moved through space and time. I began to record how many steps I was taking and the gap in time between each photograph and I began to really notice the distortions that photography gives to these original investigations. I also began to consider where and why I was walking, what was the nature of my course and this led me onto the ideas of fences as subjects. Fences stand to separate space and dictate the path you can tread by letting you only follow them. They are instrumental in the development of both societies and the individuals psyche, they claim land, develop ideas of ownership and ultimately form a barrier between what is in or out of bounds.   

The final aspect of my project came when I really began to consider the viewer of my work. I began to investigate how I could make the viewer re-enact the process I went through when moving through space. I had already came to the investigation of shooting on slide film which creates positive images from the films space and also using the whole roll of film as one complete negative again giving opportunity to distort space. However when it came to presenting the work I had to find a way to aesthetically and in terms of experience produce the ideas I have been investigating. I again looked at the basic ideas of what I had been photographing and realised that I had not actually projected the slide film, it was then that I noticed my projector and the possibility to build something quite elaborate with it. I began to think about controlling how people moved and also thought about giving them the opportunity to physically move not only themselves but the images through the projector. I underwent an array of ideas situated around how I could turn these notions into a reality how I could transfer the ideas of the project into a understandable and interactive form and I finally developed an idea which covered not only these aspects but which tied the piece together as a whole; then I just had to build it. Despite a few discrepancies the building went well as I had planned and designed the structure which made the process much easier.

This final piece helped me to come full circle with my original investigation into space. The gallery space also has its identity's which people respond to accordingly. It allowed me to take the space I had photographed through its final investigation; the white cube of a gallery space. The fences that I had photographed had transferred their identity onto the film, been reduced into an object which altered peoples reactions to its physical form; people responded to the film in a certain way picking it up and holding it to the light. However to place the work into the realms of a gallery space and to build a device in which people could move through; the space I photographed, the space of the film and the gallery space, allows the viewer to experience each development as a whole. The separate identity's of the work and space become one entwined piece a new combined identity can appear.