Wings of Water: Capturing Life's Transience with Morpho Didius & Menelaus

There are no changes made to the colours, no retouching or special effects applied to the image in post-production. From the very beginning I aim to set new parameters on research by restricting myself to the techniques of analog photography used since 1850; For this series using double exposure, superimposition and photomontage inspired by pioneers of photography such as Henry Peach Robinson, Édouard Baldus and Gustave Le Gray.
 

The original ‘Swarm’ series explores this subject in a hyper-real and painterly aesthetic created through interacting with the water's mechanics to paint the subject in light.  It acts as a reflection on life and mortality and how it is fleeting, beautiful and ultimately, tragic. The deep blue against the black void of the water, with bubbles symbolising mortality in a vanitas for the modern day exploring the frailty of nature.

I started to further explore these themes in 2014 with this new body of work titled ’Transparency of a dream’.  A particular conversation with a curator was especially in mind, one from ten years ago in which the reproducible capacity of photography - its force and its failing, was scrutinised. I was provoked by the notion that a painting is intrinsically more valuable than a photograph primarily because of its singular uniqueness. To counter this perception I presented this series of one-off transparencies printed only as a single edition artwork in an attempt to challenge the ideas concerning the spiritual and economic valuation of artworks and to create an exciting tension between their individual present and relinquished, reproducible past.

Each piece is not only a unique physical entity but embodies an unrepeatable aesthetic efflorescence; representing the singular, ghostly event of artistic consummation performed through painterly liquid mechanics. 

Original like a sketch or painting, these one-off artworks reverse the conventional parameters of photographic works. Blurring the lines between sculpture, painting and photography. Existing only as a single piece of 8 x 10 inch acetate and one unique edition print.

These works were exhibited at the ‘Death of the dream’ with Dellasposa Gallery, London.