The Cave

Excerpt From Plato's Republic.

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,--will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.


He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Intervention

"Abstract art isn't simply a lack of realism.
It's rather a heightened depiction of what the subject really is"
Curtis Verdun

tail-end

Casting Shadows

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

Woodlands

Fen

Stage[D]