Where Light Casts no Shadow, 2008

This series was conceived and developed over a period of 8 years but only  presented, for the first time, in 2008, in the context of the BESPhoto 2008 prize, alongside the series When Light Casts no Shadow.

These are images that apparently depict precise geometrical and rectilinear structures but which at closer inspection reveal a myriad of inconsistencies.

In this series I was interested in developing a visual vocabulary that resulted from the failure of the photographic process.

I experimented, over many years, with different exposure techniques and materials and finally created these images by combining several methodologies: firstly by scratching on lithographic film, then printing the resulting image on colour photographic paper, scratching over the existing grid and finally photographing the print and burying the unexposed film, over an extended period of time. The resulting images look like very precise drawings or grids from afar but, up close, reveal all the incongruities inherent to the corruption of the  photographic process and the passing of time.

Photography, by its very nature, is a medium that allows the photographer to exert almost complete control over any given situation or subject. My intention with this body of work was to relinquish all control over the process of image making.

I came into photography because of what I perceived to be the possibilities that the medium opened up. Strange, then, that what motivates me, nowadays, is not the potential of photography’s technical processes, or its possibilities, but its inadequacies, its insufficiencies.