Contact Sheet II

There are two sides to this project. On the one hand I have been making large format constructed images. For these I have used the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez as a focus. The Contact Sheets are the second part of the Shoulder to Shoulder series. The work begins as a kind of performance. I started by dressing as a Suffragette Prisoner and walking the streets of London handing out flyers which read Deeds not Words. The Contact Sheet became a means of communicating a narrative about the day / the act of performance / the dissemination of a message. Also, by making the work black and white, manipulating the files and referencing the analogue process with a form used mainly as an editing aid for photographers, I wanted the piece to create a site of introspection for the photographic message. The camera records and the photograph represents. In Contact Sheet II I play three roles, being both subject, twice, and practitioner. The camera does not record meaning. The indexical anchor is tied to the ships rope and drags along the sea-bed but the ship is adrift and headed who knows where.