Vertical
Narrative

Stillness
and Time

Vertical Narrative

Photographic images are marked by their very nature with the passage of time, starting with the disjunction between when the photograph was taken and the moment when it is subsequently viewed. By layering images this temporal gap has been extended further to capture times and places lost in the past, to disturb the present moment with nostalgic memories and remembered histories.

The image of the palimpsest is inherently literary and tied to writing, but it can also be used to discuss arrangements of spaces and their unfolding in time. The term can also be used to describe the way people experience time, as a layering of present experiences over faded pasts, and this concept of the palimpsest – the leaving behind of traces – is the basis for this work.

The work is about memory, time, traces, place and absence and an attempt to capture the presence of what has been forgotten, lost or eradicated in contemporary landscapes.

I am interested with the exposure of layers when sense of place is experienced multiple times and want the viewer to be able to fix their gaze on aspects of the photographs that resonate with their own particular experience and knowledge, the relationship between memory, loss and renewal. To this end, I have visited places of my past and my present and collected the memories from them.