Forgotten Attributes

At present it seems terribly important to understand the past and acknowledge our history in order to be more aware in the future. I have been collecting discarded photographs for over 12 years and all of the images I collect have been abandoned by their previous owners.

Perhaps the owners were relatives or friends of the subjects, or the photographers, but nevertheless the images were unwanted. The idea of an unwanted representation of a relative or a loved one is disturbing to me and it is because of my concern for the subject’s history that I began magnifying the images to try and discover something familiar.

The investigation was a process to get to the meaning of the individuals’ existence, to know them. I also photographed images from an album that had been closed for so long that the protective sheets had puckered and pulled, but had also added a layer of meaning to the images; concentric rings around an isolated boat.

I hope that the new photographs might taint and preserve what is fact and what is fiction, giving the work a sense of fragility by capturing aspects of fleeting moments and documenting the ephemeral nature of existence.