Greer Muldowney, US 6,426 per KM2
At 6,426 people per km2, Hong Kong boasts the most densely populated urban center in the world. The reality of sustainable practices, depletion of resources and a shifting global power paradigm pervade media involving China, and it’s Western syndicate territory, Hong Kong. This imagery asks that you see the same issues — still void of humanity — as homes; not statistics. As the living cities and infrastructure that address cultural standards and progressive technologies. These photographs do not propose a reality so different from the spin of contemporary media, but asks an audience on the other side of the world, the Western world, to reflect on whether these images provide a surrogate for wonderment or trepidation for a changing global climate and future.
Glenn Dearing, UK Portfolio 2 is a connected series – “Dry docks, Port of Tyne” Statement, something about the work, or anything you would like the judges to take into consideration. (Optional): In a media saturated environment in which innovations in digital technology have made possible an entirely manufactured or virtual reality, the ‘site’ as evidence of direct experience would appear to be under threat. The manipulation of the photographic image is nothing new and yet the photographic ‘take’ still retains a vestige of what Charles Sanders Pierce referred to as indexicality, in other words the residue of human contact. Towns and cities are becoming more and more space conscious. When a building has served its purpose, it is torn down and replaced, or stripped bare in preparation for a new function. Between is a transient interim period, an interruption between the object or sites initial use until it becomes reassigned or simply rots away. During this interval it will sit abandoned and decaying. It is at this point that a place is most appealing to me; an environment which is very dilapidated. The effects of time, use and man although not always visible are very much alive. The sites of study have all had contact with hundreds of lives, each of which seems to have left a small remnant behind. They are explorations of inactivity, deterioration and abandonment with reference to the importance of the trace and an ambience within a space.
Jose Ramon Moreno, Spain
Bio
William Eckersley, UK I’ve chosen these large format photographs from three projects I’ve completed in the last couple of years – Left London, U.S.80 and Dark City. Through these projects I’ve developed a strong interest in decay, dereliction and specifically how the built environment and man-made objects fall into neglect. For me, transience is represented in these photographs by the evident passage of time and its effects.
Eckersley has been photographing for the best part of a decade, after initially studying at LCC and St.Martin’s, both part of the University of the Arts in London. In that time, he’s worked as an architecture and interiors photographer, as well as pursuing the following projects. Firstly, Left London (2006) was an historic study of derelict sites and buildings around his home city, and done in collaboration with an old friend, Alex Shields. It reflected an interest in decay and decline, and garnered wide critical acclaim. After setting up Stucco Press to publish the work as a 176 page book, Sarah Kent (Time Out’s influential Art Editor) asserted that “never before has vanity publishing led to such a splendid publication”. The success of the book prompted his involvement in two high-profile exhibitions. The first was London Stories, a privately-funded show at Shoreditch Town Hall, the second was the Photo London 2007 exhibition in Old Billingsgate Market. Furthermore, his work from this project is held by various collectors, including the sportswear company Nike, and Sir Elton John. U.S.80 is his latest collaboration with Shields, named for the first coast-to-coast highway in America on which the project focuses. Shot between 2008 and 2009, Eckersley used only large format film stock to extensively document the road and its environs. Again, it explored a deep interest in forgotten worlds and wild, inhospitable landscapes, with a humanity and reverence that was revealed in Left London. It was published as a book, with a foreword by the renowned journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow, in September 2010, and complimented by an exhibition at Cole Contemporary on Little Portland Street during London’s Frieze Art Fair. His work from U.S.80 has also been exhibited at the Accademia Apulia and Renaissance photography competitions. Eckersley continues to work as a commercial photographer, with another project on London, titled Dark City, nearly completed and due for publication in mid-2011, as well as a documentary on HIV in China currently in production. Please see www.stuccopress.com for more details.
Thomas Ball, UK
“Unfinished Spaces” The four images I am presenting here are from two separate series; both based around the theme of the city as an ever changing and unfinished space. Images 1 & 2 are from my series Growing Pains – Dubai in Transition This series looks at the effect of cheap energy and cheap credit in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Image 1 – “Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai” Sheikh Zayed Road runs through the centre of the city and is home to most of Dubai’s skyscrapers. Dubai represents so many contradictions of the modern globalised city that it is not hard to be on the one hand, inspired and impressed by it, while on the other hand left totally bewildered by it. Over the past 50 years, Dubai has been transformed from a small fishing and shipping port into an economic powerhouse in the Middle East. Dubai has attempted to overcome its desert image and has focussed on iconic buildings and mega projects. The country has adopted a strategy that has spectacularised urban spaces, using superlatives such as ‘the tallest, the biggest, the greatest’ as a way of appealing to investors, companies and tourists. The speed at which the desert has been transformed into a city can remind us of the ingenuity of man and how we can overcome hurdles in even the harshest of environments. Yet how can we justify the long-term environmental costs associated with building one Dubai, let alone all the other cities that are following in its footsteps? And will we realise that we are embedded in natural systems that have inescapable limits, and that our need for growth may eventually lead to our own downfall. Images 3 & 4 are from my series Space Matters This series is centred around the themes of modernisation and regeneration in the urban space. Image 3 – “Looking north over the Heygate Estate, London” The Heygate housing estate in the Elephant and Castle, South London, is an example of modernist ‘utopian’ architecture. The estate was finished in 1973 and joined the nearby Aylesbury estate as one of the largest housing blocks in London. The Heygate was built during a time when planners and architects felt that their building designs could improve people’s lives. Many city councils were followers of the ideology of ‘environmental determinism’: the belief that if the environment was changed in ways prescribed by utopian design, human behaviour would improve and happiness increase. When built, the Heygate was heralded as the way forward for modern and civilised urban living. The fact that the estate is less than 40 years old and is due for demolition, tells us that this ideology was fundamentally flawed. Now as part of a new regeneration, once again local residents are being promised that the new buildings and developments will be the way forward and will enhance their lives.
I was born in Saudi Arabia in 1979. I then lived in Malaysia and Nigeria before moving to live in Ireland until 2006. I have a first class degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary photography from the London College of Communication, for which I received a distinction and was top of my class. My background in earth sciences has heavily influenced my approach to photography. Energy, sustainability and the environment are central themes that run through much of my work. My recent long term project Engineered Destruction looks at the energy industry, contested environments and sites of extreme energy usage and unsustainability; such as the Corrib Gas field on the West Coast of Ireland, lignite mining in Heuersdorf, East Germany, the tar sands of Alberta Canada and most recently Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I am based in London and work as a freelance photographer at home and abroad on assignments and my own personal projects. I am currently represented by Lisa Pritchard Agency in London and Picturetank in Paris.
Nick Rochowski, UK 1 Caumont Caves: First Island Caumont Caves: “Shaped by man and manipulated by nature. The mesmeric presence of a moonlike underworld landscape, completely absent of light, is explored. From mining to munitions storage to a Chateau’s back garden, the hollow spaces now lay abandoned, their transformation now interminable. Entered from a private hillside in Caumont, France the transition from light to dark is a visceral distilling experience. The empty voids of negative space step in front of building-sized rocks and distort perceptions and heighten awareness. Their slow, transient existence is interrupted with the experiences of people’s presence and thoughts. What contemplations can they offer, what moments of reflection on the passage of time? Upon entering the caves there is a sense of something beyond the cold air and rocks, one passes a liminal point. Through abstraction, manipulation of light and perspectives I present a series of images from within the depths.” First Island: Exert from Wikipedia “Originally part of the Malay sultanate of Kedah, Penang was ceded to the British East India Company in 1786 by the Sultan of Kedah, in exchange for military protection from Siamese and Burmese armies who were threatening Kedah……. Under Colonial rule the island flourished attracting people from far and wide, making Penang truly a melting pot of diverse cultures. Apart from the Malays, Chinese and Indians, there were communities of Armenians, Jews, Siamese, Burmese, Germans, Swiss, Arabs, Achehnese and other Sumatrans. Though many of them no longer impose a presence today, their memory lives on in place names like Burma Road, Rangoon Road, Siam Road, Armenian Street, Acheen Street, Gottlieb Road, Katz Street and the Jewish Cemetery, to name a few.” The island was referred to as “Bīnláng Xù” in the navigational drawings that were used by Admiral Zheng He of Ming-dynasty China on his expeditions southwards in the 15th century. Early Malays called it Pulau Ka-Satu or “First Island”. My work is of Penang’s built landscape and the symbiotic relationship between old and new. A study of the different static and transient landforms, architecture and traditions. Through exploration and research with assistance from heritage campaigners, local architects, state departments and the people of Penang, the project encapsulates the diverse nature of the island. It is a critical moment in Penang’s history. Recently the capital Georgetown has been named a UNESCO world heritage site, the second bridge is well into construction, the famed coastline is being altered and the jungle slowly recedes. The fate of the island‘s historical and future landscapes is being redefined. For now, the resilience of the past is starkly juxtaposed with the rapid rise of the new. Over 50 years since its independence and a developing city that may be unrecognisable in years to come, the island is in a state of anticipation wondering where the balance will be struck.
Born of Malaysian, English and Polish heritage in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire in 1981, Nick Rochowski is a London based photographer. He studied at the London College of Printing between 2000 and 2004. Alongside his fine art practice he shoots commissions for clients across the architectural and design spectrums, cultural institutions and creative agencies. In 2011 he established Rokov Publishing for collaborative projects and limited edition publications. rochowski_nick_biography
Michael Meyersfeld, South Africa
Manuel Villanueva, UK
On Decay : About a year ago I moved next to the still ongoing development of the Olympic site in east London. I spent several months living there in a warehouse close to these decaying buildings; abandoned for years, these building were left rotting exposed to the weather, for sometime they had also been squatted and, because of this, they were later randomly cleared up and blocked off. Due to this specific history, these buildings underwent several treatments that differed from their original function as factories and warehouses… The outsourcing of industry in the English society towards the cheaper east saw once no further need to keep them, hence the abandonment and different stages of their transient usage.
As I started investigating the area, searching for images of a once productive site, my attention was withdrawn by the traces left by time and different purposes. So many years of proper, then alienated usage, abandonment, vandalism, neglectfulness and the later need of protection had left a collection of objects that drew the traces of time in this place as a testimony of its life. Shortly before their final demolition, the actual state of these buildings had become their real purpose. Manuel Villanueva, London 2011
Anno Pieterse, Netherlands Defening silence of roaring gigabytes
John Sunderland, Ireland TRANSIENT METALS & GROWTH are part of WASTE LANDS a project that explores what happens to the waste we discard. TRANSIENT METALS are from a metal reprocessing plant. The metals are in a process of transformation from one use to another. Some objects are more recognisable than others, some totally unrecognisable, their original function completely lost. They are rendered fragmentary and unidentifiable through the process of being mangled in a crusher. GROWTH is a project about discarded objects dumped illegally. Through repeated visits and time-lapse photography changes to the objects and the environment over time are documented. The tyres in Habitat #1 have been removed now. Japanese Knotweed, an invasive and destructive species is still rampent in Knotweed #1. The umbrella is still there, although more decayed and buried by the passage of time. Biography: I have been a photographic artist all my life. My work reflects my concerns with the environment and the relationship between humanity and the natural world. My inspiration is drawn from my experience of working as an archaeologist and in ecology. I studied an M.A. in documentary photography at the University of Wales, Newport graduating in 2007. Until recently I was self employed as an artist and photographer for the archaeology sector in Ireland, where I’ve lived for the past 12 years. I have just begun a PhD in landscape photography at Northampton University looking at the relationship between humanity and the natural world in unmanaged marginal spaces.
Alexander Awramenko, UK
Supporting Information: Artists Statement The Dying Of The Light is a body of photographic work that explores the dialectic of stasis and mobility in non-places. Through the chosen locations and temporary interventions in the form of placed lighting, the work addresses culturally resonant socio-political issues, whilst also suggesting more abstract allegorical readings. The primary function of the blue anti-drug lighting used is that of a mode of social control and is designed to act as an inhibitor to perceived anti-social activity. This is both articulated and subverted in the work. It also serves as a visual counterpoint, the euphoric to the melancholic, further challenging notions of totality and comprehension. The interventions are both instructional and deflecting devices, used to both articulate conceptual and narrative concerns such as absence, loss, transience, anxiety, the overlooked and the neglected, yet also to confuse, misdirect and prohibit simplistic or prescriptive readings. This is both deliberate and vital in the work, blurring the boundaries between the defined and the undefined. By/through the use of placed lighting the chosen locations are temporarily altered in actuality and permanently in the act of recording, yet conversely or perceptually remaining in a state of flux. The temporal structure, both inherent and self-imposed, plus the inclusion of placed and pre-existing (ambient or artificial) light, means the precise moment of its recording cannot be pinpointed. The images present a paradox, that of a permanent physical manifestation in the photographic object of the impermanent phenomena of light. A phenomena that can differentiate, divide and psychologically charge space, creating in the exhibited work a moment of aesthetic visual arrest. © 2010 Alexander Awramenko awramenko_alexander_cv
Jesse Morgan Barnett, US To Accident and Abandon Such Customary Writings The American Interstate Highway System is the largest national highway system in the world, covering nearly 3,995,644 miles within the USA border. This network of roads directs millions of travelers towards business and/or pleasure, all the while modeling a cultural identity around speed, technology, and mobility. An ultra-vast network of connectivity and coordination, the interstate highway system symbolizes the developmental ambition of the United States as an expansive natural landscape that has been dominated by the technologies of mankind. The highway essentially directs the constant flow of automobiles to move within the established lines, maintaining organized and predictable traveling. There are, however, innumerable accounts of automobiles having failed to sustain this order.
Jesse Morgan Barnett is a Texas based intermedia artist working with various “photographic” media, which includes, but is not limited to, photography. Whether manifested as photographs of interstate accident sites, video loops of breath disappearing and reappearing, audio recordings of stomach acid, scanned last pages of books, or ink prints of blown out tire treads, the “photographic” media are sampled, derived, and distanced from pre-existing things, reconstituted as recorded reproductions. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree with an intermedia concentration from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2011. Jesse Morgan Barnett is represented by Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas, Texas. Barnett_Jesse_p1_CV
Diane Meyer, US Card Houses My work has long been inspired by place and explorations of the physical and psychological qualities that define various locations. The submitted images are from a series of photographs based on the idiom of a house of cards, a metaphor used to describe a tenuous situation on the verge of collapse or failing. The project was a response to both the uncertain social and historical moment in which it was created as well as to the delicate balance of the natural and man-made environment in Southern California- an area often impacted by various forces of nature.
Biography Originally from New Jersey, I received a BFA in Photography at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Arts from The University of California, San Diego. I have been living in Los Angeles since 2005, and I am an Assistant Professor of Photography at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I have received grants from The California Council for the Humanities California Stories Fund (2008) and the Durfee Foundation (2005). I have been an artist in residence with the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica (2006-7), The CUE Art Foundation in New York City (2006), Smack Mellon in Brooklyn (2004) and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency in the Woolworth Building (2002-3). My work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica; AIR Gallery, NYC and The Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City; as well as numerous group shows in the United States and Canada including The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; The Helsinki Biennale, Finland; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; NEXT Art Fair, Chicago; The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; The Seaport Cultural Center, NYC; Cuchifritos Gallery, NYC; Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, NYC; Lennox Contemporary, Toronto; Rotunda Gallery, NYC; Jen Bekman Gallery, NYC; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland; Jessica Murray Projects, NYC; Arthouse, Austin; and the Holter Museum of Art, Helena amongst other places. 2011_cv_short
Richard Glover, UK This set of photographs examines a common sight within the urban environment – buildings or sites in a transient state. Some are in various stages of construction or demolition. Others are shrouded (intentionally hidden from view) awaiting completion of a make-over. Still others, simply neglected. To passersby, these sites are insignificant – they are incomplete or neglected and unable to maintain any semblance of aesthetic credibility. Eyesores, wastelands, these sites, like some bedraggled soul lying in the street, should not be viewed. Attempts are made where appropriate to delineate this state of undress and some sites are shrouded by a builder’s cloak to protect one from obvious physical harm but, also from possible visual upset. This shroud however, like a veil across a person’s face, can stimulate curiosity – What is behind this? What will it be? Will I like it? Too often we are presented with only the “before” and “after”. What of this state in-between? Often these transient states unintentionally create a new identity for the original structure or space. The shrouds, scaffolds and impermanency alter the visage and stimulate new concepts of what these sites are. This state of transience is a subject unto itself. It is real yet somehow publicly unacceptable. It represents, however a fleeting and therefore special moment in time. Fleeting physically, in that the construction/demolition process can be quick and change rapidly, and fleeting emotionally in that unappealing sites garner only an affirming, derogatory glance from most viewers.
Richard Glover is an artist and photographer working between Sydney and London. His work is held in the collections of Tate Modern, The Royal Mint, the Royal Institute of British Architects, Art Galley of NSW and ArtBank Australia. He explores nuances of the built environment and presented as series – exemplified by the six-year documentation of the transformation of the London’s Bankside power station into Tate Modern. His series, New Suburbs was featured on ABC Television’s “The Art Life”. In 2008 he was a finalist in the Blake Prize and ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award.
Jeffrey Stockbridge, US A house is a container for life It protects and provides for its inhabitants Both physically and spiritually A house is not just a physical structure It is much like a living person It is born, it ages and it passes away We develop feelings for a house We remember its smell and we listen to it settle We trust it when we sleep and we miss it when we move Years after a house has been abandoned Signs of life persist Discarded memories echo down dark hallways And shadowed rooms As the sun makes its daily visit It reaches the far corners of the interior Breathing life into a still landscape Revealing a bond between human beings and their shelter. Jeffrey Stockbridge is a photographer who documents the complexities of urban blight. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Stockbridge photographs the prevalence of drugs, prostitution, and abandoned homes in the city. The prevailing theme in Stockbridge’s work is his subjects will to survive a harsh urban landscape. His work has been exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Art Museum. Stockbridge was recently awarded 3rd Prize in the 2010 Taylor-Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Sever Petrovici-Popescu, Romania
Three Houses I’m interested in how people reconcile with their own memories using photographs. Often photographs change memories and even replace them. These small photo shrines reflect the relationship between the people that live there and their predecessors and even help them negotiate the relationship with death. Well preserved memories or simply a requirement of the tradition, I believe that photography is the only medium that requires substantial negotiation when compared with one’s memories. If paintings’s conventional character is accepted from the start photography claims to depict the reality but it actually creates its own. When photographs and memories are confronted the memories are changed. The memories of the person depicted in a photograph are challenged but for the rest of the people that see the photo it creates reality. The problem is even bigger when someone hangs on the wall a photo of themselves that they know it was more or less manipulated without their will. A family portrait is just a staged photograph that ends up on the family wall. Its purpose is to reassure the people depicted that everything it’s alright. More often such photographs depict something else. It should be reality but its not how we remember it. Every time someone looks at his own photo sees something that more or less disturbs him. I think that is why people are so often afraid of photos. People are so preoccupied of their clothes in the moment that are photographed not because of how they are dressed but because they never see what they expect in their own photos. Even if the popularization of photography transformed the wedding photos into a few thousands (literally) we are still afraid of our own images. The mirage of the single moment that I can not decipher because photography as a medium is very limited in information makes me study each photo in an attempt to see more than there exists. Since the importance of family photos for its members is much higher than that of any photos of art no matter how valuable I feel the need to set the vernacular photography as a starting point in my projects.
Sever Petrovici-Popescu 1986 Born in Bucharest, Romania Lives and works in Bucharest [email protected] Education Licene in Fine Arts, Photo-Video Department at National University of Arts Bucharest High school Mihai Viteazu Bucharest 2003-2005 Exhibitions and contests: Second prize at National Travel Photo Salon October 2006. Group Exhibition at National Radio House in 2007. Co-holder of a Lecture at Summer School ANT (National Agency for Young People) in August 2008 Group Exhibition Essl contest, at Gallery ¾ by National Museum of Contemporary Arts 2009 Group License Exhibition at Romanian Peasant Museum Group Exhibition « Romania Mon Amour » , Olbia, Sardinia, Italy July 2010 Group Exhibition Matt Roberts Arts Photo Salon 2011
Tahir Un, Turkey
“Silence of the time at the Yuruk (nomad) Village” is a documentary work. The Yuruk Village, from the point of its architectural values and folkloric traditions since Ottoman Empire period, is among the rare regions which protects its authenticity to a large extend. The population of the village is decrease because of unemployment and mostly elderly people live together remembrances in their old and traditional furnished residences today. tahir_un_rh
Mehrdad Naraghi, Iran The House The House The sense of emptiness of a house whose occupants have departed is somehow striking for me. There is a profound feeling -somewhat- strange about the abandoned houses. Most of the time there is a sad story behind it; forced immigration, need for money, grown children who have left or even death. We can feel it through the remains which occupy a place here and there. The things that have been forgotten or ignored to be taken along seem useless now. In addition there are objects with memories which were left intentionally untouched so as to be forgotten or maybe left to be part of a history. Time plays the main role for this abandonment. The pictures of large gatherings, child’s birthdays, wedding parties and … are covered with dust and left on the drawer. Yes these are all reminders that time is passing. Live memories of moments have continued their life and have led us to an essential question. Which one is more real, a person who was sitting on the arm chair and has been recorded in my mind or the empty chair? It’s left for me to believe that its typical characteristic of human existence which we can feel, hear and smell even in absence. Born in Iran in 1978, Mehrdad Naraghi Studied in Sharif University of Technology. His enthusiasm for photography motivated him to complete courses in it and shifted from engineering to photography. His approach to photography is to show the significance of human existence through capturing imagery of places and things, which have been impressed upon by the human experiences; the silent and empty places that seem to have been left behind. He is inspired by painting and strives to exemplify the qualities of light and color in his works which he appreciates in painting. He exhibit regularly in Tehran and has taken part in many group exhibitions internationally, including Photo Quai (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris), 165 years of Iranian photography (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris) and That Shimmering beast (The Empty Quarter Gallery, Dubai). Also his works have been published in magazines and books, including Different Sames: New perspectives in Iranian Contemporary Art and Connaissance des Arts.
Lottie Davies, UK The first three images in my submission are from my series ‘Memories and Nightmares’, this is my artist’s statement about that series: My work is concerned with stories, personal histories and identity. Since the dawn of language and conceptual thinking, we have constructed our sense of ‘self’ from memories, beliefs and ‘life-stories’. The tales and myths we tell ourselves and others about ourselves may be redemptive or they may be painful and despairing, but either way, they have intense personal meaning. Although each person’s story is inevitably coloured by the accidents and idiosyncrasies of a unique life and sensibility, they are told in conceptual languages of image and narrative which to some extent we all share. In many ways, stories and memories are a uniquely human experience; we have used them for generations to illustrate our lives, record ourselves for the future, and to make sense of the past. My project ‘Memories and Nightmares’ is concerned with nightmares and early childhood memories, and the construction of identity through private interior narrative. At the beginning of 2008 I asked several of my friends to send me written accounts of either an early childhood memory or a nightmare. I have been using the resulting stories as inspiration for a series of images. For each image I used a model to stand in for the ‘true’ subject of the story, through which device I hope to produce a different insight into the subjects’ identities in comparison with more direct representations; an image drawn from the intensely private ‘internal’ life of one individual, which can nevertheless be brought into the light of shared conceptual discourse, and can perhaps speak to the interior life of others. Our understanding of who we are can only be found from a single perspective; our own – no-one can see inside my head, it is only by reporting my thoughts and experiences that I can communicate ‘who I am’ and ‘I felt this’. The memories and nightmares I have collected are part of the wider collection of human stories, and by using them as inspiration for these images I hope to show an inkling of what it might be to witness someone else’s internal experience. Early childhood memories are particularly fascinating because they as take us close as we can get to the impossible ‘once upon a time’; the very beginning of our stories of our existence in the world. They are where we begin. They are absolutely individual and personal; they are also retold and re-remembered, and the way one person describes the event or time may be different to others’ memory of it. What counts for us in the memory, it seems, is ultimately not its reference to the ‘objective facts’ of a particular moment but its capacity to act as a founding myth, a myth of the creation of the individual person. They are perhaps not even memories but memories of memories, reframed again and again as we revise our own sense of self in response to the threats and demands of the world. In nightmares as in early memories, we sometimes remember a clear narrative, but often what remains in our memories is only a landscape or a texture of feeling. For all their surreal or impossible elements, nightmares share the singularity and the inaccessibility of early memories. It is this paradox which inspired me to make this series of photographs.
