I have been making photographs for over 25 years. I adore the medium of photography as an expressive language, complex and eloquent enough to convey facts and feeling with equal force.
My photography examines layers of the psyche and the tension found between the natural world and our modern existence, whether in the ice fields of Iceland or in my own back garden. I work instinctively to respond to personal experience, producing photographs which play on different levels - from the formal to the psychological and aim to convey more universal meaning. I also make hand crafted artist books and installations in addition to gallery photographs. I have shown my work worldwide and launched my first publication Transient Beauty in 2008, a photographic meditation on mortality and loss of youth inspired by my mother’s death.
One of my most recent projects Living with Wolfie has just won the Fine Art "Conceptual and Constructed" category of the Sony World Photography Awards, one of 12 categories, selected from over 35,000 professional entries. I will go to Cannes this April to receive my award and the images will then be included in a world touring exhibition and publication.
My photography examines layers of the psyche and the tension found between the natural world and our modern existence, whether in the ice fields of Iceland or in my own back garden. I work instinctively to respond to personal experience, producing photographs which play on different levels - from the formal to the psychological and aim to convey more universal meaning. I also make hand crafted artist books and installations in addition to gallery photographs. I have shown my work worldwide and launched my first publication Transient Beauty in 2008, a photographic meditation on mortality and loss of youth inspired by my mother’s death.
One of my most recent projects Living with Wolfie has just won the Fine Art "Conceptual and Constructed" category of the Sony World Photography Awards, one of 12 categories, selected from over 35,000 professional entries. I will go to Cannes this April to receive my award and the images will then be included in a world touring exhibition and publication.
My interest in Vice Versa is to allow my work to mutate and respond to the world of the Dutch "other" and in doing so, examine my own expectations and values. Geographically, the Dutch and the British are not far, but I want to look at the subtlety of difference and common ground. I am excited at the prospect of not knowing what will happen in the exchange and of the diversity of the artists participating.
Below are some of the images submitted to the Sony World Photography Awards. The image above is the newest addition to the Wolfie family, taken in the recent snow which brought the UK to a standstill recently! I welcome comments from all Vice Versa artists to see what you make of the work.
At the end of the images, you will find my official line on the images - but this as with everything is subject to change the more I listen to the valuable insights of others.
The series documents my response to the 'presents' that Wolfie, my beloved cat, brings into the home. At first, I experienced some kind of horror: these dead creatures waiting for me in different parts of my house. Then I looked at Wolfie and tried to understand the instincts which brought them there. It reminded me of the difficulty I have in understanding the behaviours of the opposite sex or of a different tribe. At the time, my ex-partner had been repeatedly unfaithful and I saw some parallels in coming to terms with the difficult habits of the 'other', whilst also accepting their difference.
The ceremonial aspect of these photographs is similar to the Victorian Memento Mori photographs of deceased loved ones, using flowers and locks of hair to preserve the memory of the living. With these images, I am making a photograph from a shrine, engaging with the changing patterns of nature to bring myself closer to the memory of death and of loss. They may also be a way of acknowledging certain destructive behaviours within myself, as I become Wolfie’s accomplice in playing with the dead animals.
HI Tamany,
ReplyDeleteYour work is so delicate!! and look so ceremonial, as you say above.
I find quite amazing and intriguing that you handle the dead animals your cat brings to your doorstep/house. So, is the work about the animals or about Wolfie?? It is interesting that he never appears in the photographs. Or is the work just metaphorical of those changing patterns that you mention?
Lovely work!
Aran
Thanks Aran...
ReplyDeleteThe work is a response to my relationship with Wolfie. Instead of photographing the "horror" in a deadpan way, I wanted to own the feeling of the animals more. I think that very conceptual photographic art can sometimes distance itself from the feeling of the subject and I want to reclaim this in my own photography. Part of reclaiming "feeling" is to address the disconnection with nature in our lives generally.