Fine Margins
The impulse for producing this series came from ruminating on criticism on his book ‘In Flagrante’ that is reported to have upset Chris Killip. The critic said that his work was in the gutter. This referred to some of the images straddling the gutter of the book diminishing and disrupting the image. I set about creating a series of images around this observation of Killip’s book and ended up with questions about representation and the truth claims of photography.
The format of the photographs adheres to conventional sphere of vision, this is to make initial viewing of the image comfortable and unchallenging.
The images are two photographs almost joined together but not a panorama – they are two distinct photographs. There are however visual clues that reveal the differences between the two images contained in the single ‘frame’: on interrogation they reveal that the difference can be about time or perspective or both. That the photographer has stepped closer to or further away from the subject, that the photographer has moved sometimes only just a few steps and sometimes that is unclear although the environment is clearly the same environment. Viewers can discern that the images are taken seconds or minutes apart and as such speak to the flow of time and how that alters a scene. All of this is a particular formulation of the ongoing question of truthfulness in photography.
What unites these photographs is a similar black and white aesthetic and the presentation. Of course, the single image has the capacity to hold a narrative, but again these images intend to generate questions about the ‘truthfullness’ of that narrative. Passive frames do invite us to consider both the content and what might lie outside the borders of the image – these images frustrate that impulse by both showing what lies beyond the frame and encouraging the viewer to continue with that activity despite this.
These images also seek to highlight that the photographer shows you only what they want you to see. Other individuals will explore elements of a scene selectively according to their own visual interest, the presence of a frame equalizes all of the viewed elements. When considered with the other elements above, the question of precisely what do we mean by editing is raised.
