Individuation
Drawing on Vilém Flusser’s notion that the camera is a programmed system that constrains creative possibility, I treat my own mind—conditioned by 55 years of social and cultural expectations—as an apparatus in need of subversion.
My practice explores materially embodied photography, valuing the indexical and the unpredictable. In contrast to overly-programmed conceptual work, I’m interested in what happens when the body and unconscious are allowed to speak through process.
My practice is influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of individuation, a mid-life process of integration and self-discovery. Having spent much of my life looking outward—performing roles, meeting expectations—I now have the time to look inward.
Each analogue camera or process used allows me to examine a particular part of my psyche.
The work in progress above is made with a 1953 Voigtlander and I’m using it to trace the unravelling of an inherited faith.
The images below are made using Polaroid emulsion lifts. Made on Beltane when the veil is thin, they are anchored in both time and place. They explore the conflict between my rational mind and an, up until now, ignored yearning for the numinous.
Through instinctive engagement with the woodland (below), I’ve uncovered a desire to realign with natural cycles and explore how time is marked, felt and embodied. Working with the cyanotype process creates not just an image but a direct physical trace. I’m not shying away from the pictorial or the decorative; in fact, I embrace them as a conscious decision to reclaim these historically devalued aesthetics. In an era of digital detachment, these prints insist on presence, on contact, on the photograph as both index and object.
This is an ongoing project. With each new apparatus I use I will continue to uncover layers of my psyche until I have a foundation on which I can build my practice in my third act.