Weight of History - Balkan Landscape series.
Analogue Photography, Landscape, Analogue, 50.8x40.6cm
This series, made between December 2011 and January 2012, depicts unspecified Balkan landscapes and proposes to show a visual representation of their history. A myriad of events, many of which we will never know about, lie buried beneath the surface of the present day.
The series uses the process of making an analogue photographic print in the dark room as a metaphor for exposure of a place to historical events: a sort of visible memory. Through over-exposure to light the photographic paper becomes darker. In the Balkan series the work becomes imbued with a sense that something has transpired within these dark landscapes and takes on the weight of these implied historical events.
The images are a departure from photography’s traditional role as a method of recording very definite happenings, and a way of challenging what we hold as significant and examining the process of memory. Such traditional uses of photographic representation can have the effect of de-contextualizing the history of an event by way of focusing on a single image without looking at the larger context.
Through allusion and association the Balkan series attempts to suggest a wider historical context, appealing to the viewer to access their existing visual and historical knowledge to complete the narrative.
The series uses the process of making an analogue photographic print in the dark room as a metaphor for exposure of a place to historical events: a sort of visible memory. Through over-exposure to light the photographic paper becomes darker. In the Balkan series the work becomes imbued with a sense that something has transpired within these dark landscapes and takes on the weight of these implied historical events.
The images are a departure from photography’s traditional role as a method of recording very definite happenings, and a way of challenging what we hold as significant and examining the process of memory. Such traditional uses of photographic representation can have the effect of de-contextualizing the history of an event by way of focusing on a single image without looking at the larger context.
Through allusion and association the Balkan series attempts to suggest a wider historical context, appealing to the viewer to access their existing visual and historical knowledge to complete the narrative.
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