Loss of Faith, Loss of Face
by Courtney Hackett
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About the Book
"To you, the viewer, my family photographs would be indifferent and of little interest. To me they reveal the most intimate and unexposed aspects, provoking moments of self-recognition and a discovery of a self-in-relation. In this project I have explored the interplay of public and private photography, using photographs that wouldn’t ordinarily be presented to the public.
Photographs are the only material traces of an irrecoverable past. Today, photography’s social functions are integrally tied to the ideology of the modern family. We may assume that they come as close to representing reality as the photographic medium gets, but whilst photography immobilises the flow of family life into a series of snapshots, it perpetuates familial myths while seeming merely to record actual moments in family history. As our memory is said to be never fully accurate, family photographs cannot be said to be unmediated representations of our past. Looking at them we both construct a fantastic past and set out on a detective trail to find other versions of a ‘real’ one. So what happens when you take these photographs beyond their seemingly conventional and opaque surfaces?
My images present a super imposition of past and reality, the-has-been and the not anymore. I am intersecting the surface itself by directly layering mixed media on top of the image, I am creating a replacer. The photograph becomes an image of an image, it is no longer a direct representation of my family. The paint, ink and wax metaphorically demonstrates the distance between the moment the photograph was taken and the present. The layers themselves represent this separation of time."
Photographs are the only material traces of an irrecoverable past. Today, photography’s social functions are integrally tied to the ideology of the modern family. We may assume that they come as close to representing reality as the photographic medium gets, but whilst photography immobilises the flow of family life into a series of snapshots, it perpetuates familial myths while seeming merely to record actual moments in family history. As our memory is said to be never fully accurate, family photographs cannot be said to be unmediated representations of our past. Looking at them we both construct a fantastic past and set out on a detective trail to find other versions of a ‘real’ one. So what happens when you take these photographs beyond their seemingly conventional and opaque surfaces?
My images present a super imposition of past and reality, the-has-been and the not anymore. I am intersecting the surface itself by directly layering mixed media on top of the image, I am creating a replacer. The photograph becomes an image of an image, it is no longer a direct representation of my family. The paint, ink and wax metaphorically demonstrates the distance between the moment the photograph was taken and the present. The layers themselves represent this separation of time."
Features & Details
- Primary Category: Arts & Photography Books
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Project Option: Standard Portrait, 8×10 in, 20×25 cm
# of Pages: 36 -
Isbn
- Softcover: 9781320025324
- Publish Date: May 27, 2014
- Language English
- Keywords photography, painting, postmodern, abstract, degree, project, snapshots
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