light, movement & contingency
recorded on film
Transforming submerged floral arrangements into fields of process-based abstraction, these works emerge through the interaction of water, light and analogue photographic construction. Produced from multiple film plates exposed beneath highly purified water, the resulting images exist between photography, painting and stained glass, where liquid movement and surface tension physically reorganise the image during exposure.
Working entirely without digital manipulation, Hamilton combines large-format underwater studies through sequences of exposure and darkroom construction, allowing colour, distortion and optical interference to accumulate over time. Form is not imposed but emerges through contingent interaction between material, movement and duration, producing compositions that oscillate between recognition and dissolution.
The series carries references to devotional image traditions, abstraction and the material language of painting. Flowers cease to function symbolically, becoming instead unstable structures through which movement, optical transformation and temporal duration are recorded. The works embrace controlled contingency: water operates as an active medium, the photograph becomes the fixed trace of physical events occurring across multiple exposures.
Each work results from the interaction of light, liquid, movement and time, accumulated through darkroom construction into images that exist at the threshold between representation and pure optical phenomenon.
Working entirely without digital manipulation, Hamilton combines large-format underwater studies through sequences of exposure and darkroom construction, allowing colour, distortion and optical interference to accumulate over time. Form is not imposed but emerges through contingent interaction between material, movement and duration, producing compositions that oscillate between recognition and dissolution.
The series carries references to devotional image traditions, abstraction and the material language of painting. Flowers cease to function symbolically, becoming instead unstable structures through which movement, optical transformation and temporal duration are recorded. The works embrace controlled contingency: water operates as an active medium, the photograph becomes the fixed trace of physical events occurring across multiple exposures.
Each work results from the interaction of light, liquid, movement and time, accumulated through darkroom construction into images that exist at the threshold between representation and pure optical phenomenon.