Photo_rant//

So...I have been thinking a lot about this project and what I have been working on at the moment. Some of this thinking coalesced last night when I had to rapidly write an artist statement for group show that may be happening with the jnr and snr photo group here. This is what I wrote:

These images represent an ongoing body of work that is exploring the idea of the human body in public and private space. It is examining the way in which we move through and interact with everyday spaces, so-called public spaces, private spaces and the exchanges we may or may not have within them.

This series of images aims to convey a feeling of dislocation, of confusion and bewilderment to the viewer about the idea of public space. These images aim to create confusion and bewilderment in the mind of the viewer and to make them aware of the growing confusion about what exactly is public space and does it really exist.

///So this wasn't really what I expected to write...but it kind of made sense in relation to what i am trying to do with these images. There are a lot of things going on (in my head) and dont know how much is being conveyed or not. In writing this last night it felt like the two sometimes disparate bodies of work that i have undertaken in the past months have finally found this point where they have merged together. But in saying that im not sure how i feel about this merge yet.

The floating people images have been a way of dealing with several things. The sudden change in the landscape that i am in, the way in which i have been feeling suspended in a new environment. But i would like them also to deal with the ideas of the human body in general and its relationship to space, and being here in the US seems to make it even more relevant to the nature of public/private space.

In saying this I recently re-read a post that Rachel left me. It was talking about Denis Darzacq and his flaoting people series. She mentioned the way in which the figure sin his work cast no shadows and are shot in flat landscapes and how this could reference that perhaps they do not fit in or belong in the landscape they have been shot in. Another intersting part of Rachel's comment was the way in which the lack of shadow could also reference the theft of soul, like the old photographic myth....

On top of all this im just not feeling hot about the floating images that i have been shooting in the last week or so...the first thing i need to do is go back and re-look at these first images:

I like this image more than the more recent ones where I am centred in the frame. I feel that the recent images have become focused soely on the figure rather then about the space that the figure is floating/suspended in. I want the figure to be a smaller part of the image, for the image to create more interest about the location that the figure is in...

RantyMcRanterson