Am I looking or am I forgetting. What is it I see.
Truth and reality hold no grasp here. All I can say is look here and see this. It is my place to remember, to grasp at the sand of fleeting moments. To honour the past that you cannot let go of.
The body of work 'Casting Shadows' represents the photographer's return to the site of his father's death. The Landscape of this site is embued with the photographer's relationship with his father's passing, one of sorrow, respect and trauma. The images in effect are understood firstly in terms of a eulogy to the father, and secondly in the distance between personal histories and surface realities of the photographic image.
As such the camera becomes central in any representations made after the fact. The aura of the images are obscured by the breath of the photographer so as to interrupt the indexicality of the photographic surface. The personal nature of this trauma is removed from the actuality of the landscape. The event is alluded to but hidden from the veiwer.
The intention of the photographer is to construct a series of images within which a presence is suggested where memory is fragmented, but which is just just outside the sphere of understanding and acceptance. It is the photographer's position that within photographic representations, understanding is merely an assumption of understanding. for real understanding can be brought about through lived experience and reflection.
"Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved."
Iris Murdoch
