Exhibition
Sight, Unseen - Photofusion
Stories, rituals and narrative traditions surrounding shadow and darkness are found in every era and diverse cultures, and have long been associated with negative phenomena; nightmares, danger, death, hidden strangers, blindness and the supernatural. Panic, anxiety, and fear are their psychological bedfellows. Shadows bear witness to the fine line between the material world and a world in which shadows are the images of the soul.
Sight, Unseen is a visual exploration of how darkness functions in Photography, a medium that is associated with light and clarity.
In a physical sense shadow disrupts sight, smothering areas of the image with a mask of inscrutability, denying vision and bringing to mind the myriad psychological connotations of the dark: the hidden, the unseen, the unknown. The absence of visual information turns the eye, and by extension the mind to what cannot be seen, placing the viewer on an indeterminate, liminal plane between the real and the imagined.
From a perceptual point of view shadow is linked to visibility not only through its ability to hide an object/ subject but also to frame what is not hidden. The darkness masks detail and obscures texture, a monochromatic cloak which diminishes the visible and encloses the subject in a poverty of visual information, drawing the viewer’s mind more acutely to the subject, thrusting it forward into sight. The unseen then, is as much of a participant in our viewing experience as what is seen.
These functions of the unseen can operate independently of each other, or co-exist within a single image, affecting the way in which a photograph can be read. Shadow is much more than a mere physical characteristic, but rather a complex and multilayered phenomena that affects the viewers psyche in a variety of ways.
In a medium which relies implicitly on clarity, light and vision to impart ideas, thoughts and interpretations of the world around us, darkness and shadow in photography allows the viewer to literally and metaphorically fill in the blanks.
The Unseen is a proposed group exhibition that Illustrates that photography is in fact as much about what is unseen as what is seen. It explores five different photographers responses to shadow and darkness as inherent elements within their practice. Through the manipulation of darkness, these photographers load their scenes with an underlying intensity and tension that leads the viewer down a psychological avenue. An avenue where the final destination can only be determined by the viewer themselves.
