final artist statement

 

         Down a Rabbit Hole

The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.

                                                                                      -W.B Yeats

'Down a Rabbit Hole' constructs spaces of transition between what is
real and what is imaginary. This photographic world inhabits no
specific time or place. These photographs are eerie introspective
dreamscapes, inspired by fairytales and cinema, presented as staged
tableaux.

This body of work explores the imaginary and artifice in photography
as a borderland between inner and outer realities, and the 'theatre of
the mind' as a place of personal escape. It is as much about the
contemporary construction of images as it is about the need for
escapism and belief in the fantastical and beautifully weird.

As parts of a personal refuge these photographs contain elements of
both the familiar and the unknown through fragments of fairytales and
dreams reflecting an internal world. They have no real beginning and
no definite end. They sit in the transitional space between here and
there as a place for imagination, possibilities, and freedom from
restrictions of reality.

Dida Sundet, October 2008

Some words on inspiration

Ever since I was a kid I have believed in magic. All the stories I heard, the books I read and the films I saw spoke of more than just the physical, logical and actual. And though I never did learn to fly or developed any Jedi powers I still believe in magic, and it lives in fantasy and storytelling.

This series is inspired by storytellers, artists whose work momentarily help me forget that for the most part reality is devoid of magic. Photographs that both engage in questions of the realism of the record and the fiction of the set, and films that dwell in the realm of the internal, the fantastical and the uncanny. 

This work comes from a lifelong fascination with the imaginary, and later also the use of art and media in relation to it. In some ways most of the research for this project was going on long before it begun in the form it is now. One of my aims has always been to create visual escapes for myself in some way. Fragments of an internal world made tangible through the photograph. The invisible made visible. Through more recent research I have been able to find artists that deal with similar subject matter to mine.  And some have been of bigger influence than others.

Simen Johan is a Norwegian photographer who creates imaginary spaces through seamlessly compositing several digital images into single photographs. His body of work Evidence of things unseen (2000-2003) focuses on childhood fantasies and role-play while questioning the objectivity and (expected) accuracy of the photograph. One image in particular lingers on in my imagination. A boy on a red tricycle pulling a tied up, crazy looking circus monkey around in an industrial area at night. Is the monkey screaming? Is he angry or happy? Does he belong to a fortune-teller? (His little hat looks like that of an old school gypsy.) Why is he tied up? Where are they going? Why is such a small boy out late at night?

His work has inspired further thought on the construction of images and what technology has done to our relation to the photograph. His open-ended stories have been the source of some enjoyable escapism. They invite me to create my own narrative from the framework set up through the photograph. They engage on several levels, emotionally and intellectually. Similar to mine, key elements in his work are layering dualities, the imaginary and bizarre, and the exploration of the crossroad between the internal and the external.

Tom Chambers is another influence as a fellow explorer of the natural and the fabricated. Many of Chambers' images combine three main elements, children, nature and animals. Each image is a photomontage to express, according to Chambers, a fleeting mood with strong emotional currents.  Again it is the bizarre, dreamlike and imaginary that attracts me to this work. The unreal has become part of reality. His photographs made me start thinking of how taxidermy could solve the issues with using animals, and what this adds to the mix. Apart from a lazy, sleeping dog once, my work has naturally been unsuccessful with live animals. They generally don’t appreciate being put in the spot light.

As well as photographic and theoretical research, a lot of my inspiration comes from films, and especially those of David Lynch. His use of chiaroscuro lighting to contrast the light and the dark to express dualities, his saturated colour palette and his dark, intense, psychological dramas. Lynch creates mysterious universes that remain in part unexplained, which makes every viewing different. 

These artists, amongst others, have influenced me to think of ways to construct narrative photographs that visualize a borderland of inner and outer realities. Hybrids of the natural and the fabricated. 

Overall it is their storytelling that inspire me the most. Spellbinding tales where the familiar meets the mysterious and magical. Invented melodramas exploring the unknown. 

 

WebSites

http://www.simenjohan.com/

http://www.tomchambersphoto.com/

http://www.davidlynch.com/

Curtain close

To my own surprise and joy, I finished all my prints earlier last week. And to me, they look amazing. I love the paper they're printed on (Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Peal) even if it is a somewhat difficult paper to handle. The blacks are lush and the colours... the colours are beautiful.  All in all it's been a somewhat costly affair on a tight budget, but I would never have let anyone else print them. Creating the print is just as important to me as creating the image. After all, they are not complete before they are printed and become objects.

I would still like to do 4 more images to get to a total of 10 after I finish this week. I still shoot, even if it's sometimes just to keep refining the technique or.. well, because it's what I love to do. There just haven't been  time to get to 10 before this bulk is finished. 

I shot this image in Taradale a couple of weekends back. I was just playing around to satisfy a creative itch I was having a late night after a birthday party. I love this shot, but it has potential of becoming an even better one. The feet are mine, and are just there to add another element to the composition. I'll be going back in a couple of weeks to do a re-shoot and do a different set up where I don't have to use myself. It's all one exposure with very little post. 

It belongs in a different story than this one. I would like to use a young girl and a somewhat different perspective. I think. We'll see when the time comes. 

Still to finalize before thursday are the sequencing of the images as they sit together now, some sort of background to hang them on, some writing and a whole lot of thinking. I expect the nerves to keep building as it all comes to a close. 3 amazing years, a degree in Fine Art Photography and a few bodies of work. Nice. 

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

The final stages of this project have set in. Last review clarified a few things and somewhat changed others.

Down The becomes Down a

I'm changing the title to 'Down a Rabbit Hole'. Referring to it as the Rabbit Hole makes it seem like there's only one rabbit hole when there in fact is probably more than I can ever imagine. I could use the in the sense that it is my rabbit hole, but I think there might be more than one there as well. The owls are not what they seem...

Kill your darlings

After I test printed most of the images and started putting them all together as objects, a few things changed. Though I like them all in their own way, not all of them belong in this series and end up weakening the work as a whole. So there are now 6 instead of 9 images (for now. My aim is to make 4 more). The images cut are two from first semester, the brick and skull characters, and the new portrait of a woman with skull. The main reason for cutting them is that they lack the general look of the others. Signs of nature (as nature is reality), the colour palette and space the other images occupy. The painting in these images have bigger strokes and covers a significantly larger area in each one. The 6 I am using are made up of very specifically lit areas that form the fictional space and main composition of the image. They contain elements of both worlds, the natural and real and the artificial and imaginary. 

Bi-lingually speaking...

Re-writing my artist statement, once again... And adding another separate paragraph on the influences that helped me create the work. The statement itself is coming together nicely. As you would expect after having written it so many times, I guess. There are still some parts I haven't quite figured out how to resolve to my own satisfaction, but I expect it will be done by the end of this week in good time for final review next week.

Bye, bye borders...

My wits finally caught up with me and I have dropped the 5cm black borders around the images. Others have told me before, I know, but I come to things in my own time for my own reasons. It just seemed somewhat redundant when they will be hung against a dark wall anyway, or preferably a bit out from the wall to be exact. I'm looking into having them mounted on foam core with some sort of backing that will set them about 5-10 cm out from the wall.