Recontextualising Family Photographs | Gel Medium Transfers

Nov 28

I've found this week so difficult for making work and the pressure of trying to come up with ideas has put me off doing anything and I've been avoiding working all week. I eased myself back into it by watching 'What Remains: The Life & Works of Sally Mann" video on Youtube. I would seriously recommend it to anyone, it's an amazing documentary. However, what inspired me most about this documentary was when Sally describes how she feels after finishing a project, she says that she feels like she'll never be able to take another photograph again. The advice she gives is to just photograph something, anything so today this is what I did. I found some images and transferred them onto another surface, it's one of my favourite techniques and even though i've featured hundreds of them on here before doing something so simple has eased me back into working and getting over that initial fear has allowed me to begin working and feeling inspired again. Anyway, here are a few images of tonight's pieces.I've been keeping a journal of my work which I'll post some images of at a later date. But I've been documenting some of the 'themes' of my work which include - absence, memory, trace, family and simulation.Jean Baudrillard explains the notion that the idea of simulation "threatens the difference between the 'true' and the 'false', the 'real' and the 'imaginary'.SIMULATION: "is the imitation of some real thing available. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system"