Working on short videos with my friend & favourite artist Doug Selway made me think again about the concept of time in photographs.
My Dust & Shadow project is all about time. It takes the artefacts of the recent past – in this case, fortifications dating back to World War 2 – and treats them as though they are mysterious monuments from a forgotten time.
I’m interested in the way we – as a culture or a society – suffer from collective memory loss, so that the impact or significance of objects fades. At the same time, we have a tendency to mythologise, and to project emotions and ideas that originate inside us on to the external world. In the process, we lose touch with the real meanings of objects, and perhaps the warnings they have to give us.
This is a function of time. And so I wanted to get a sense of time passing into some of the images in the project. One way is to use motion blurring. Another is to turn the still images into a sequence. The video above does both.
I’m planning a series of short videos, based on the Dust & Shadow work, but which will integrate into The Silent Museum project inititated by Doug and on which I am now a willing collaborator.