Uncertain States 15.
Nice double page spread featuring several images from the series, 'Experiments in Social Fiction' + artist's statement.
Here's the accompanying text (the images can be seen on the main website) :
Experiments in social fiction.
Traditionally, photography offers evidence, or
fact. Occasionally even definitive proof. Perhaps it's been a while since it
showed us anything with such certainty. The digital incarnation of photography
is too malleable, too easily manipulated. And while this may be the case, a
photograph is still an object that implies authenticity.
The use of digital manipulation in
this work should be, if the picture succeeds, imperceptible. It should be so
because all elements of the image are 'true'. They are all 'there'. Any
incongruities between elements within an image are a result of the passing of
time. Digital manipulation simply allows elements from different moments
to occupy the same image.
The scenarios depicted are being manipulated
from the moment the camera comes out of the box: from the moment I arrange
myself, the camera and the subject in front of it; by the way the subject
responds to our presence and that of the camera. Digital post production is
simply a way of rearranging pixels, it is not a way of rearranging the
expression on someone's face.
Whilst I wouldn't want to expressly break down how
each picture was made, the viewer becomes aware of the game being played: after
all, most of the images are improbable; some are impossible.
I like to think that these images have as much in
common with cinema as still photography- the end result has as little to do
with the moment of its creation as possible. There is no attempt here to
describe any kind of ‘real’ narrative.
In fact the opposite is the case: any kind of
conventional narrative or reading of the image is contradicted by the
improbability of what is being portrayed.
These are not pictures of things,
these are pictures of ideas.
I'm not saying this thing happened,
I'm saying this idea
happened.
And this is the photograph to prove it.
