Gallery
The gallery serves as a space to showcase temporary collections or series of photographs that the artist has been developing, offering a glimpse into the evolving nature of their practice. In today’s landscape, photography faces new challenges and opportunities, especially with the growing influence of artificial intelligence in art. This space invites visitors to appreciate the enduring craft of photography and its rich complexities. It encourages thoughtful conversation, welcoming visitors to share their own insights and reflections.
Study of darkness and light
I have recently been working on the reception of, and evocation from light and darkness around me. Not only in the subject but also how the circumstances can shape the way I absorb them. In this photographs darkness is situational. The photographs resemble an unedited reality from film pictures that were unable to be manipulated. It is often that I find myself doubting between using the flash for capturing with film. I usually prefer the reality of the moment in its raw exposure but it is also a risk of missing the moment altogether. Be it a metro station or a small attic in a studio, the way brightness hugs my longtime friend and subject Anaís, makes me change my perception of her. In those pictures the concept of possibility becomes narrower and easier to understand.
As Frederik Pohl uses it in his creation of Alternating Currents, possibility is left to chance unless tweaked to favour by its augmentation of probability by quantity of unpredictable events. If I kick a ball towards the wall, then the ball has some possibility of hitting it right in the middle. If I kick 30 balls then the possibility increases. Somewhat of a bland and colloquial idea, but one that also led me to explore more in my practice and every day life. Fear latches on to possibility. I have always remained close to the idea that through the mind we can learn to control ourselves and how we react, ultimately using experiences as fuel and not weight. A tough balance between analysis and experience that I still navigate today. Is analysis a suitable path to achieve a higher or better control and power over the future or is it a foe to justify experiencing life from a distance for fear of actually living it? Is there space between the two?
In the analogy of the ball the possible reflection is not in me kicking 30 balls but in 30 balls flying. The air around them, the speed in which they collide, and my depleting strength are just as valuable influencers. Both the environment and the actants (me) are influential. They are not only producers of internal reactions, they are also possibility in themselves. Every small detail creates a small reaction in the internal, changing the overall experience. Should we embrace the multiplicity of actants, living and not, that shape our overall experience of every moment of every day?
Making our environment into a narrow walkway makes performing any task easier. However, that ease comes from the removal of the distractions in life that come from the quality of the surroundings. Like a video game with lower graphics. A highway-turned life that advances seamlessly through milestones. However, isn’t the path meant to be plagued with open seams. The narrowing of the environment in order to achieve a goal is less fulfilling that the embracing of all details into that same walk.
Yet, what causes this narrow mindset? I want to say selfishness, or toxic capitalist determination. But it doesn’t properly fit. Every day, the possibility of some actant to hit the middle of your wall is present. The number of human actants, being the highest we encounter, is the most likely to hit it. Yet, as cars in the highway they worry about avoiding each other more than advancing together. The only reason I can properly use is obscurity. When all the plurality of dividers are brought together: doubt, fear, hate, loss, pain, grief, sadness, depression, anxiety, etc. the thread that can join them is obscurity. To forget there is an alternative. To forget that there is a chance to seek else. Capitalist thinking latches on to this obscurity. I often think that is why tourism has grown in the last few years. It is highly performative, yes, but I wish to think that behind that lies a subconscious feeling that while travelling, one finally allows for the environment to be experienced in full with its details and particularities. This remains to be unproven and often denied.
Going back to the darkness present in the series, in these moments Anaís lives and breathes and her existence becomes part of my experience. I see the focus on her eyes, the anger in her smile and the way fluorescent German metro station lighting hits the floor beneath her, the tiles around her and then her.
For the study of light digital images come in use. The power of a moving lens in real time made it so its manipulation while still uncontrollable, easier to navigate. The initial dip of the toe was minimal. Simple vertical movements. It directly related to the idea of how sight is constructed around the concept of the five senses. Sight has grown in power over humanity. I don’t mean in importance to survive, however, after the big jump into the digital age both marketing and its capitalist investors relied on the power of sight to induce appeal. With time, sight has needed to become bigger. I sense my receptors now directed to specific things. An aesthetic that instead of being part of a moment of experience is attached to a mental checklist to earn my likeness. I move for a change. I think the categorisation of receptors into senses is toxic to the reality of the human experience and not beneficiary to the expansion of it.
In the study I sensed how by overwhelming my eyes with the prolongation of its appearances I could numb it for a second. When I look at the pictures I find the emotion in the blur of my hands shifting, Anaís laughing, and light changing. It is in the blur that I feel the presence of myself and the other. In the blur more than one thing exists. Her body and the environment are perceived as one whole moment. The actants are part of the action.
I see the human experience uplifted by experience by joining together the senses and then having the flow of energy and emotion be uninterrupted by meaning. The people then gain power of communication without the boundary of reason or feelings. Emotionality is not further named. The blur allows for more. The sparks of light in the dark and the overwhelming brightness of the light both conjoin in the viewer and the person. This images are very personal and yet a path to copy and implementation. Whatever feels intuitive.