Thoughts about the course Documentary

It is perhaps apposite that at the end of a course one might reflect on what one recorded at the beginning of it, and in this course the question was raised about the nature of Documentary. In my post entitled ‘What is Documentary’ I concluded with a quotation from ‘Transparent Pictures: On the nature of Photographic Realism’ by Kenneth L Walton “And this is, I think, what Walton refers to at the end of his piece. That there is a…”failure to recognize and distinguish between the special kind of seeing which actually occurs and the ordinary kind of seeing which only fictionally takes place, between a viewer’s really seeing something through a photograph and his fictionally seeing something directly. A vague awareness of both, ….,could conceivably tempt one toward the absurdity that the viewer is really in the presence of something.”

Coming blessed or burdened with my personal and professional background I suspect that I have always had a notion of the difference that Walton refers to, but I was, I think, more interested in testing the veracity of the image as opposed to the veracity of intent. A natural Post-Modernist’s cynicism of image’s innocence and purity has been informed by researching the medium’s practitioners – with a distance still to travel – and one which has provided a healthier and much broader perspective of this visual medium under study. Where I think and hope I have moved to is into the purposeful use of fiction to illuminate a truth, and here it has also scaled my ambition. I don’t now expect to reveal a ‘big’ truth; that aspiration needs to be matched by an ego of equal ambition. I think though I want to score stories of much quieter narratives. Investigating smaller particles of life. Fontcuberta’s investigation into the fallacy of photographic truth for example, has been a key revelation along with other artists studied along the way. A document is something that informs, what and how it informs is in the gift of the creator of the text; it’s nuances or otherwise are variables to be manipulated with a purposeful intent whether in an ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’ narrative form.

The course also seems a smaller venture than the other course I have undertaken concurrently with it – Gesture and Meaning – but I feel I have travelled a further distance and ploughed a deeper furrow, more straighter and less deflected.

On average I think I have averaged a visit to a gallery every week, and when I haven’t its because I have been to more than that number, and in that process I have traduced my earlier comprehension of what “Documentary” is and I wonder if that was the purpose of the course, if so it has succeeded. Of equal importance is the development of a cohort of students with whom I can talk regularly with, to confide in, to ask questions and to seek, in some cases, authority in testing margins in the territories that I am researching. I am aware that in Level 3 I will be expected to cultivate a cohort, to find ways to network and to build a professional web as I develop myself from where I am to a fledgling artist in practice. I am also aware that the Thames Valley Group is another vehicle that has allowed me and fellow students to coalesce and filter ideas and I have gained from that greatly; as well as much as meeting practicing artists, Fiona Yaron-Field, Anna Fox, Tom Hunter amongst others as well as tutors for which I am very grateful. I have enjoyed this course immensely and I feel, as I suspect I should do, on a path looking forward to the next phase and thanks in no small part to Sharon.

 

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 part III

I remember last year’s DB exhibition and how the arrangement of finalists had affected me, specifically how the impact of one exhibit as it rested by another artist’s work. Probably most affecting was ‘The Afronauts’ by Cristina De Middel next to Bloomberg and Chanarin’s work ‘War Primer 2’.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

I am equally sure that whilst the emotional response was less for me this year, it must surely have an effect on the viewer to have such disparate work on show in such close proximity when the only contextual touchstone is that they have all been proposed to win a prestigious prize in the photographic calendar. Lorna Simpson’s work reminded me of the discussion that took place at the Thames Valley Group’s previous meeting a couple of day’s earlier. Simpson’s view, in my opinion was very ‘female’ a gendered perspective and singular amongst the other practitioners on view at TPG’s annual show. The earlier discussion raised, amongst other subjects to do with feminism and the arts, whether a view could be determined, or determinedly, feminine. Last year’s solo female’s work (one hopes this isn’t a case of tokenism – perhaps I’ll check previous year’s statistics?) ‘The Afronauts’ wasn’t, I think, a particularly gendered set, but I concede my view may be masked by how I felt about the work as a whole.

 

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

This work didn’t deal with war, as it’s co-companion on the fifth floor Richard Mosse’s work did, the expressed and hidden violence of a land desecrated by men for men; no Lorna’s work was intimate and personal, a look at a life projected through time. Small and needing to viewed at close distance, it had no notion of power, it was a look at how people were with each other, even if the other was, seemingly, the other side of the camera. The subject and the image maker seemed intimately bonded.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

This quiet conversation with the viewer (quieter still perhaps after the Congo perils of Mosse’s work) in tender monochrome tones allowed the viewer to consider the relationships that existed for women of colour a half century earlier in the West Coast of America and have those thoughts mediated through a lens today. No less deep because of the apparent leif-motif of the production compared to Mosse’s carcinogenic perspective of riotous colour, but no better because of the proximity to it.

And so to Jochen Lempert:

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

Harking back to the recent Thames Valley meeting at which I had decided to air my first attempt at an “Open Work”. This piece had been with me since I created it a month or so earlier – I have written about it here, here and here. I presented these images as I had coded them from a large set of images and I wanted to see if any of the other people present could muster a narrative from them. I have to say that if what I hoped to achieve was even a connection to the image set then I failed; but no matter. The general comment that maybe it was ‘too open’ that I provided no sense of an emotional hook to attach the viewer to, maybe the ‘my narrative’ that I refused to explain was too obscure, or ‘too loose’ to be made liminal for others and that if I had provided, even a sense of a narrative/contextual axis to pivot from it may have worked. I’m not sure, but the experiment taught me some lessons and I am very grateful to the group for indulging me.

And so back to Jochen Lempert’s work. Well the first thing that struck me was the text; there was some and more than I had expected. Whether this was a strategy on behalf of the artist or the gallery I have no idea, but situating text there was. In fact I think the material to accompany this exhibit was considerably greater than any of the other artists, with a handout to title/explain most, if not all the images.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

And whilst the images on the wall had no title or caption, the viewer was allowed the privilege to consider the printed document and edit their way through the imagery. As a strategy for ‘Open Work’ I found that interesting, the images were numbered – which usually predetermines an order – but there was no other indication as to which way, or indeed order, one should contemplate the works on view. On one hand most of these images had, as a common visual theme, the natural world, they were all monochrome and analogue based. As regards my reaction to them as a whole, as a work with an underlying narrative I couldn’t discern one, even with the text. I do think however that I was maybe looking to deeply, or not deep enough and that I need to do some more research into this to be able to connect in a form that is attractive to me.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

 

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

 

Assignment 3 closure

In the end I have decided to call a halt to this project, at least for assessment purposes. The assignment that I sent to my tutor still exists on the blog and the print that we agreed would supersede it is enclosed in the assessment box ready for delivery.

I can sense a much longer journey for the work that I did in the assignment but I need to close down and concentrate on completing some other work to ensure that the assessment is completed on time. So thanks Mum from the file called Mother narrative. It’s been a piece of work…..

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 part II

I have written about Richard Mosse’s work previously at The Photographers Gallery where they are mounting the Deutsche Börse work. Of the other three artists I didn’t expect to be drawn to Alberto Garcia-Alix’s work and I left it ‘till last, as it was closet to the exit from the fourth floor and knowing that coffee would be closer; but drawn to it I was. Russell Squires wrote about it here for the WeAreOCA site

I didn’t really feel any sense of the work from the images on the wall, certainly they were graphic, wonderfully printed and presented, but over the last few decades I have seen lots of very good prints, expertly made and created to draw the viewer to engage. These images weren’t any worse, nor perhaps any better at developing that discourse – but I felt it was (yet) another set of visually graphic images of an artist in torment, or perhaps an artist’s recording of his torment. What I hadn’t bargained for was the video.

The single images portrayed the said artist’s torment but I wasn’t ready to be engaged with it, I had purposefully walked right on by these mounted photographs to view the Lempert piece, that I had been looking forward to – the subject of another post – and had expected to walk right back after a cursory glance on my way to the coffee. There was though something about the audio (the soundtrack to the video) that perhaps triggered a purpose to linger longer than I had planned.

The deadpan, monotonic commentary that accompanied the video with, in the main, still images the sub-titled translation that worked extremely well. I wonder now whether there was a purpose in the English sub-titles given the need to focus on the image, then script, then image and maybe script again that forced a connection that a voice-over in English might not have achieved?

The language of this artist was very poetic and the complete experience of image/audio and text held me there on the viewing bench for the duration. I was transfixed.

“And time keeps moving backwards” the narrator is translated as saying, of course all photographs are memories – how could they be anything else? But the statement, in the context of the artist’s life, was all the more poignant for the story he narrated. Addiction is perhaps the single greatest act of selfishness that humans have devised for themselves and we saw those selfishnesses, heard them through the narration, how he continued to sacrifice, in the same way many addicts do, all those around him. And how those that travelled with him on that journey fell by the wayside. “My intentions are never honest” he says at one point, an addict slips and slides around the notion of veracity together with its implications. It is a prioritized life, that of an addict, and this video presented scenes of a life that slipped from lucidity to apparent lunacy.

What I took from this though was the power of the edit, over and above the visceral reaction to an artists depiction of himself in all his guises. As image crashed with text and it’s audio accompaniment presenting this viewer with a reaction that chimed with another of his sets of words, blandly expressed “they [the images] leave an echo in their wake”.

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

I don’t think I was expecting to be as moved as I was, last year’s exhibition had me quite affected with the Bloomberg and Chanarin exhibit, and whilst I am always going to somewhat cynical about these big prize events, with their association with the marketing effort of some major organization seeking to project its brand, I hadn’t expected to be so moved.

Knowing that the principle reason for attending – the Jochen Lempert piece, resonating as it does with the works of Eco’s ‘Open Works’ was on the fourth floor but I headed one flight higher and viewed two quite extraordinary works: Lorna Simpson’s work ‘Summer 1957 – 2009’ about identity in a large series of monochrome images which complimented the strident colour work of Richard Mosse’s ‘The Enclave’.

I have been aware of Mosse’s work for some time now; it has been featured on WeAreOCA before and has caused controversy there and elsewhere for its approach to documentary photography. Utilizing film that was intended to help reconnaissance aircraft find people it renders the land in a range of hues that seem, at first glance, to prettify it. But moved I was. I will return to the other finalists later in a separate post.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

Yesterday, at the Thames Valley meeting we discussed feminist art and the discussion ranged into the gendered depiction of ‘view’, for example was there a difference in the way in which women ‘see’ or want to ‘record’ things compared to men. The land in Mosse’s very large digital ‘C’ prints was a very pretty pink, but the land was ‘Male’; scaped by Man for Men. Their appearance in the Pink permitted the viewer to stop and consider what it was that might be happening in the frame. This, seemingly slow, film projected a land so defiled as to defy imagination – listen to Eve Ensler’s visceral depiction of the same land towards the end of this lecture – it is the desecration of the land and humanity that is so appalling and moving at the same time. The use of outdated film provides another layer, this war is about who controls the land – another trope from yesterday’s discussion – for the wealth that it holds – those rare earths and minerals extracted to enable the digital revolution to continue on it’s inexorable course – with iPhones and Androids, allowing a the distance learner the ability to participate, but also to contribute to the vision before them on the top floor.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

The size of these prints is impressive, but I felt drawn into them to look and search for humanity, for some semblance of life amongst the horror of the sharp end of neo-liberalism, and what I found was sadness, waste, loss and a sense of how man has become lost in the land scaped by Men who are absent from the frame and live a long way away.

Photograph courtesy The Photographer’s Gallery

It is a virtuoso piece. Quite brilliant. Quite empty and quite emptying.

The problem with assessment

The problem with assessment seemingly is in it’s preparation, the work seems to want to carry on. I had decided to make the mono print as a reference, it being the distillation of the work that I did in this assignment. I had had some conversations with Sharon on this about how it might be developed – see here – and whilst photographing the framed image on the wall I was struck both by the ambiguity of its presence but also but the strength of the photographic image. Barthes, in Camera Lucida famously waxed lyrically about his mother’s depiction in a photograph (opening sections of ‘Part Two”) and whilst I may still make another image as a discard I decided to make another image and purposefully distress it. I decided on a matte paper and printed it with a gloss profile – I know the image will fade – I then tore the image in two separating the two subjects, my mother and me, and then arranged them in a number of settings to see which ‘spoke loudest’.

 

I have registered with the college for the July assessment so I need to finalise things. I want to register soon for level three. Sharon suggested that I try and find a way to leave the personal from this archive images. The problem with that is that these aren’t archive images, they are constructs with, clearly, my own narrative assembling, and disassembling, them. Either way leaving level two will provide a Rubicon to cross and allow fiction to become the essence of what I want to achieve with narrative. The first and third images have an element of movement about them, either one may be moving away from the other or moving closer; the second image is in a state of finality – they are distinct from each other. The images that have missing persons show no disconnect at all, after all where are they? Unless by condition we know there was someone there and in which case it might be an altogether different image.

I don’t photograph biscuits, that’s not what I do. Sophy Rickett and Bettina von Zwehl at the Benjamin Stone archive

 

I visited the current small exhibition of Sophy Rickett and Bettina von Zwehl at the City Library in Birmingham, which is their response to the Sir Benjamin Stone archive; and to view both the Daniel Meadows retrospective, which is quite impressive.

This is the third work I have seen that responds to that archive, Anna Fox’s ‘Back to the Village’ was inspired by it and I went to listen to a talk by Faye Claridge last year as she spoke about her residency working on the archive . Before attending the talk by these two collaborators I went to see the work (definitely a work in progress), which is on display very near the Daniel Meadow’s work.

But back to the collaboration. As the work is displayed/mounted I could sense the ‘openess’ of the work, how by the images are placed within the mount they provoke a response to the plate as a whole. These plates all have five images, even if an image is a text and even if the image is missing, because the mount has apertures for five images (the structure of the plates are similar – one central large aperture surrounded by four further apertures in the corners of the plates). This plate structure implies a determined placement of imagery, as if there was an association between those on a similar plane, connected by a purpose.

And text. Text which provided an anchor it seems, to the plates of images; seeding/suggesting/implying a narrative direction from which to drift from or to, even if that might be sub-conscious perambulation. I wondered about the presentation and soon after the talk at BIAD later in the early evening started I could see how that came about.

Sir Benjamin Stone’s collection appear in album’s: album 46 for example is titled “types of English, French and Russian women” – and page after page are photographs of women, interestingly there is no denotation of which women came from which country, just pages of female portraits looking out at the viewer, almost as catalogue entries, and perhaps they were.

Rickett and von Zwehl had landed upon Album 31 as their entry (not an easy task it appears) into the archive. Album 31 is entitled “miscellaneous” – though no explanation as to why these images became privileged to be entered in that album, but no matter – it is there they reside. The collaborators used the visual artifacts of album 31 to work out their response and thereby answering my earlier question.

The talk was interesting from a number of perspectives: it was clearly unrehearsed and founded on a PowerPoint presentation with all of it’s traducing potency fully realized. The initial thoughts that were expressed was about their collaborative methodology, and this talk was about how that approach was echoed by the ‘collaborativeness’ of the talk – each taking the lead or withdrawing easily as if the language they spoke was one, but without disguising the ‘seperatedness’ of their travels to the starting point of this work together. It was engaging, serious, often amusing and the talk was better for this unrehearsed, almost haptic, approach.

There were distances between the two artists, most notably when discussing their personal practices, and whilst not meaning to appear pejorative in that assessment because their delivery when talking about their own work was not about the two of them, but a reflection of themselves as a working artist– the collaboration though – which had its own, completely ‘other’ character.

The other significant thought that I took away with me was about the work itself, how these artists, with a common voice, had interpreted the archive and made another piece of work. Similar to the work of Fox and Claridge, whose personal perspectives delivered equally individually voiced reactions, the work presented here gave yet another. Making more work from a base settled in late nineteenth and early twentieth century imagery might enable a freer interpretation and departure from the original photographic presentations. However this work employs very personal work, work that was both discarded but revered enough to not be jettisoned; these artists took from their own archives images that were perhaps consigned to their own miscellaneous album. Images that still had some reason not to be shredded, but without the original target left in them; their resurfacing through the editing process provided the ability to recontextualize themselves. Rickett spoke purposefully about the shifting contestability of images – losing the ‘preciousness’ of the images, how once they meant or spoke about one thing but through the mediation of time and memory they are given permission to present another element in another narrative. Images of half eaten biscuits photographed on impulse for their beauty and resonance, as they lie discarded by a daughter on the wooden floor.

These two artists met every Thursday and went through the process of curating images (text as imagery as well) until coming collaboratively to an agreement. They spoke about how that process would reveal information about themselves to themselves, how sometimes there were disagreements, sometimes evident in the work itself, how it wasn’t all sweetness and light.

I am interested in ‘Open’ works, about the free interpretation of artworks and this collaborative venture by Rickett and von Zwehl presents this viewer with a set of short episodes in a narrative of my own making, their presentation of such a scale that it needed close examination, a strategy that drew me closer to the work and helping to exclude extraneous confusions.

A quite inspiring evening.

 

Assigment Three re-working

 

Looking back, final edit

I had a meeting with my course tutor Sharon to review my coursework and to discuss the assessment submission. Assignment three had a series of images of my mother that in the main had her looking back in a reflective stance. After talking it around a little while it was thought that maybe instead of a series of images one might suffice, this highly edited image above. The image says a lot about what I’ve thought about through the course, firstly it is a construct, two images of two different times creating a narrative that is fairly directive. My mother regards me, her son, at a point in my life – the point was my first date with Elaine (she saw the sweater and decided she didn’t want to be seen with me so sartorially challenged and avoided me (but that’s another story). The front wall of the house, the door and myself date from an earlier time, my mother and the rest are contemporary. It is therefore a series of truths and not a truth, to tell a story albeit in single image form.

The square format reflected the original image format – it was one of a very few that my father made of me – and I thought the crop to those dimensions fitted the with the sense of narrative that I wanted to project. I like her stance, outside of the property borders to a house that she dwelt in for most of her life, bore five children in (she brought three children with her when she moved in). She regards me, I look slightly away. There is life in this image (for this viewer).

Wall hanging – with light

Sharon suggested I put the image on the wall and re-photograph it. I must say that I wasn’t immediately enthralled by that prospect as it would suggest that I am honouring the moment, exalting it – ‘framing it’. And because I know the core of the emotion I found difficulty in that concept, I thought about it some more and decided to try it, though purposely askance. I was really pleased with the light as it echoes some of my other work with transient light in assignment five. I was’t sure then and I’m still unsure now. I want to recognise something here, again suggested by Sharon, which is about ‘letting go’. Images have strength, for those that have a connection to the image it is understandably difficult to render that emotional connection void, something that I’ve been encouraged to do when working with archives. Honouring the emotional connection of an image is a noble thing of course, but to make images that develop another narrative, then leaving that connection behind is perhaps  a requirement. It might though be difficult to recognise when this has taken place when the original connection is personal and when it hasn’t when working with personal imagery, or imagery that has a proximity. These constructed images do not, and indeed cannot, contain the original intent and I am very pleased to ‘let-go’ of whatever I imagine might be going on in the photograph, though I fully recognise that a viewer knowing the cast of characters might question that…..

With a patina of dust

 

I also had another look at the image from an another angle and tried to pick out the ‘fingered dust’ on the glass. I have a strong feeling what this might denote/connote and would wonder if anyone else would gather similar information from the image.

I had another thought which was to shatter the frame with the photograph in it and then re-take the image, I may still do that, but I realise it is a once only exercise and considering assessment – sending the framed image intact would be good deal easier (and safer) than trying to gather the shattered and splintered remains of a broken frame, but then that may provide evidence that I haven’t left everything behind……..

 

Ornette Coleman and the ‘Open text’

Not many people have accused Ornette Coleman’s album ‘Free Jazz’ an easy ride, whether it was the ‘First take‘ (released as a track in it’s own right and only 17 minutes long) – or the seminal album version – covering both sides of a 33 1/3rd rpm long playing vinyl album (subsequently transcribed to a CD providing a single track of nearly 40 minutes – here *). It takes some investment. The double quartet had not rehearsed the piece very much, if at all, and the opening section has that sound that a friend once described to me once as ‘scribbling’; atonal, discordant and lacking in any natural sense of structure and harmony. The opening section – the introduction therefore – is, even after all this time from first tackling it, an effort of will.

I was reminded of this work when I began to study Umberto Eco’s ‘Open Work’, not so much the difficulty of the text, which isn’t easy and not least the introduction by David Robey (which I decided to leave until another time (a time which has yet to arrive)), but with the concept of searching for or, releasing the hold on the narrative. My purpose as an artist had, I thought until getting to grips with this concept, to provide a course for the reader to follow. To direct the flow from tributary to stream, from river to sea and resolve the outcome to a satisfactory – even if troublesome – conclusion, much as a rhythm section might do in a jazz quartet.

Of course I am aware of unresolved works, but most works of art I have encountered through the course of this study have a purposeful purpose. Artists have wanted to lead me somewhere even if it is to face a conclusion of my own drafting directed by them. To connote and denote by the artifices available to them, some I must say more successfully than others, to conclusions that they themselves have probably decided on. I don’t find this in any way a dishonorable act; most works tend to flow, novels, musical scores and photographic artists (most usually in bodies of works, though sometimes in single images); the ebb and flow of narrative to deliver the reader to a place where a question has been posed leaving the reader to think about responding.

Coleman’s work drifts, the initial assemblage of noises transforms after a while upon a bedrock of percussion, to snatches of melody, melodies that perhaps unconsciously form between the players used as they are used to ad-lib with others, the resultant soundscape starting to provide more immediate comprehensive imagery. Listen again, and whether it is familiarity of performance or form, and it becomes easier. The listener becoming more adept at comprehending the piece. It’s a journey.

When I first looked at Larry Sultan’s work some time ago I was reminded of Chekov’s visions of family life; what seemed disrupted visions of a dystopian life in California seemed to have an echo of the late, expiring, Russian bourgeois life, and those connections were made by familiarity in both works through which I was led to a place. Both Sultan and Chekov’s narratives wanted me to explore what they were concerned with, wanted me to consider my reaction to the issues they were interested in. And the connections made are mine alone; Sultan and Chekov, Coleman through Eco. Eco’s ‘Open’ vision is to not declare intent but to provide very minimal vernacular tools to explore personal stories. But I wonder how loose this process can be?

By selecting a range of texts for contemplation already some direction has been created. I know from my own first attempt at an ‘open work’ that I have used visual aesthetics to build phrases for example in tone or contrast. I recognised similar structures in Coleman’s work as well as in Freddie Hubbard’s (trumpet). I don’t think I want to extend the corollary with Coleman’s work anymore, after all his is a genius talent and I wouldn’t want to draw comparison with my work, but music is a linear narrative more directed than most, it is never experienced other than in the forward direction and serially; a text though can be experienced in many forms and the time base is under the control mostly by the reader. Forwards or backwards, sideways or reverse, it leaves the author and becomes a new piece of work. Music is ephemeral, text is physical.

I have a sense of ‘floundering’ with this attempt, not knowing if the conscious and deliberate image making which has informed all these images is not deep enough or in fact too deep, I have no depth charting sonar. I have made statements about what the thought processes were when I made them – here – and I can still see them in the images in this post – they are real and palpable to me. However, as I am want to do, I have jumped in at the deep end with a strong sense of how this will inform how I might go about my practice in the future, how, like Anna Fox’s statement about using stories to tell truths, or maybe telling stories about stories.

I asked a tutor very early on in my studies about language, about whether it was necessary to comprehend and then utilise an artistic vernacular in order to communicate to another artist, or maybe just within the artworld as a whole. I didn’t get an answer, but I am now sure that what my purpose has been about is about how I might articulate through imagery, certain ideas and thoughts, about the situation I find myself in the world. I am determined not to find myself constructing polemics about things that I find myself becoming emotional about. I don’t want to make work about things that make me angry, I want to channel my emotion into work that describes how I see things on a smaller scale, but about the biggest issues of love and fidelity and so on, and to do that I have to continue to strive to develop a syntax that is accessible to whomever might read my work. As much as Sultan’s readers can determine isolation in his work, Chekov’s (breaking) society within (breaking) society and, after some investment, a picture derived within from Coleman’s double quartet.

 

* Free Jazz, owes a lot to abstract expressionism rather than ‘Open Works”

The Sargasso Sea

image 1

The Sargasso Sea lies at the western edge of the route from Britain to the Caribbean, it is encompassed by currents on all sides and has no land for its waters to break on. The currents north and south of it were responsible for the traffic that populated the islands, re-populated, welcomed and then repatriated for over four centuries.

Colonial rule, that pernicious device of the ‘Old World’ gave rise to the cultural heritage of the islands, providing the backdrop to its history and the population that was ‘peopled’ by its oppressor are left with a legacy that presented itself to me as echoes in varying forms.

These images depict and document how I ‘see’ those reverberations from the past. The patronage and subjugation, and subsequent rise of independence followed by the re-patronage through commercial dependence on the world that created an aberrant society with societal norms that had no connection with their own heritage.

‘The Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys is a novel about displacement, about ‘otherness’, about colonial/post colonial issues (it may also be a feminist novel and even a post-modern novel!). The novel’s situation of a white creole being ousted by her native people and then ending her days in an ‘other’ place – Britain – kept returning to me as I made these images. I saw these symbols of the changing face of colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism, The diasporas of people whose fates have ebbed and flowed, much as the seas between the two continents have, still holding those islanders in a place of dependence. And that is what I wanted to show, my reaction to the past’s inflictions on the present.

image 4