The Photograph Becomes The Object

Our belongings hold the physicality of our past. We are attracted to them and they become attached to us for reasons of beauty, generosity, utility or avarice, they reflect something of the owner, a symbolisation of character, the most telling are the minutiae, the mundane relics of a lifetime. Personal individual feelings and memories are wrapped around the artefacts we choose to keep which may not have any other value, ‘One mans junk is another’s treasure.’  Much of our everyday objet d’art seems to eventually become worthless, especially once the original owner is dead. My work reclaims and reforms that memory through the Bromoil technique, my photograph becomes the object, and through the process I am combining my recollection of the person and their ownership of the artefact. The resulting print is a synthesis of my relationship with the owner. Bromoil requires the investment of time and physical effort, that investment is my contribution to an artefacts new presence.

My practise explores the physicality of the photographic print and why we should regard the duality of image and existence, the photograph is substance and visual, two values. I am also fascinated by burgeoning interest in obsolescent photographic techniques, methods and ‘retro’ aesthetics that appears to be the antithesis of the digital age. Digital photography most often does not resolve as a physical entity, images remain an electronic notion, seen but not existing, as a consequence the ongoing discussion and concept of the photograph as object has never been more relevant or important within the history of photography.