Artist’s Statement
Since the
late 1980s, my work has consisted of still-life photographs, originally using
antique processes, such as Vandyke and salted paper printing, invented during
the earliest days of photography. In
2004, my method shifted dramatically, and now employs digital technology. Although contemporary media present
different challenges than those of the 19th century, my work remains faithful
to transforming real objects existing in time and space into allegorical
imagery exploring personal vs. collective memory. Moving beyond the idea of literal documentation or objective
truth, I attempt to subvert photography’s ability to record the minutia of the
everyday world in order to find the realities that exist beneath the surface.
For Pictures Within Pictures, new settings
are created for vintage found photographs, using every day objects, frames, and
vegetation from my Nova Scotia garden, in order to explore how vintage images
can be altered when they are removed from any original context and manipulated
into a completely different framework.
What does a photographic image from the 1890s, or the 1940s, say to us
now? Our collective memory disallows looking at an image without
bringing some sense of history (personal or collective) to its narrative. No matter how elaborate or dense the newly
created context may be, the photograph within it still retains a layer of
elusiveness, as it cannot escape entirely from its own time encapsulaton.
