Sketches of Shadows

These studies form a body of work titled Sketches of Shadows. Made without a camera, they are photographs created entirely in the darkroom. Using the soft, glimmering light of a flame ‘painted’ over silver gelatin paper, the results chart sculptural reliefs and deliberate plays of light and shadow on the prints. The effect seems random and arbitrary, but requires a degree of control and conscious action, as the shapes do not reveal themselves until the paper is in the developing chemicals. While painting light over the surface, I am essentially working blind.

Once the print has emerged, shapes that may resemble or evoke certain motifs reveal themselves. In some we have forms that appear as eyes; a symbol of clarity which stands in contrast to the blindness of their making. Naturally the eye has long featured in art as a symbol of omniscience and mystery, often with an unsettling undertone. It was used extensively in Surrealist art such as René Magritte's The False Mirror (1929), a painting which was once owned by Man Ray, who himself returned to the device countless times in his photographs and films.

The affiliation to Surrealism is also reflected in the process of revealing the unconscious or unknown through imagined and incidental gestures. Aesthetically this work also owes a lot to the photograms and paintings of László Moholy-Nagy. Each print is a one-off and cannot be recreated in the same manner. Conversely, there is no end to the available forms that can be made using such techniques, making it an entirely autonomous process.