The power of the photograph

I think, in the age of digital photography, we often take for granted the curious ability to instantly capture images, and see whether its desirable or not. Facebook has transformed (to an extent) the way which we see ourselves documented in the world, people upload photos, the good, the bad and sometimes just the plain ugly.

To this end then, I think the power of the photographic image has been lessened, though in the right hands it can still provide a powerful polarising image. Eadweard Muybridge provided an invaluable source of extensive photos of animals, and humans in motion. These wonderful images go through  a complete range of actions and articulations and are a truly fascinating study.

My practice relies upon relics, the forgotten and abandoned images of our past, though this wasnt always so.

Last years work, revolved around the use of photos which had a personal connection to myself. They are, of course my Grandparents moments, their memories contained within a series of small processed sheets dating from the late 1950s, to the early part of the 1960s one example of which you can see above. I imagine in another 50 years time their delicate nature will seem absolutely absurd, as increasingly as I mentioned earlier, Facebook and its prevalence amongst my generation means we have little need for a hard copy, everything is stored digitally [More after the jump].

The tactile nature and nostalgia if you will, of holding this singular moment has been lost, making way for the ability to have it projected onto the world via any computer which is connected to the internet.

In my practice, I've come to realise that a huge wealth of our cultural heritage can be so easily lost because of a lack of this empowerment, which actually is very liberating, simply because each photograph of a certain period is thus unique. I broke free of personal connections during the latter part of 2010, in favour of exploring the anonymity in photographs which have no bearing upon my life, I have a collection of many unidentifiable prints from the early to mid part of the last century. 

I'll leave you with this image below from the collection which, I'm using currently to produce a series of four panels from the sitting figures, for the upcoming degree show I'll be a part of at De Montfort University, due to take place over the summer.