Essays
'Provenance'
06/09/07
(Go to ARTSHED in the Portfolio Section for more images of project from building to completion)
Provenance is the origin or source from which something comes, and the history of subsequent owners (also known in some fields as chain of custody). The term is often used in the sense of place and time of manufacture, production or discovery
The Process of Making
The making of this panel has involved six photographic processes over the same number of years.
The first image of 18th C ivory anatomical models was shot on transparency at The Hunterian Museum in the year 2000. A Polaroid photograph was made from this image. A ‘lift’ technique was used to transfer the image to a glass microscope slide. Six of these unique slides were arranged and laid on to photosensitive paper and a photogram was made in the darkroom. The photogram was scanned and finally printed directly onto the Lucite, which is now on show as a light piece.
Why this image in this context?
St Anne’s Gardens is a lovely green space in the heart of bustling Soho. It is sobering to think that there are up to 100,000 bodies buried in its four acres which date from turbulent times of plague and body snatching.
For me, the body, whether in whole or part, is a great source of fascination and mystery. I spent several years working on a photographic project at The Royal College of Surgeons, which became the catalyst for many ongoing preoccupations in my work
The anatomical models were photographed at The Hunterian museum and date from a time when bodies were viewed more as constituent parts. They are intricately carved and piece together like a puzzle. Times were uncertain and people like the Hunter brothers were pioneers in the search for clues as to how the body worked and could be healed. For a time they lived in Soho and William Hunter opened the first School of Anatomy in Gt Windmill St (now The Lyric Theatre).
A few hundred years later we are in an age of anatomical enlightenment – to see inside ourselves at whatever microscopic level is not solely scientific but a continuation of reaching out to define what is at the core and mystery of being…
Wynn Bullock (photographer) speaks eloquently about image making. He says that transcendence is possible when one makes the effort to probe beneath the surface of things. Mysteries lie all around us even in the most familiar of things, waiting only to be perceived. He says, ‘If I photograph in such a way that I meaningfully evoke a sense of the known and the unknown, I feel I have succeeded.’
The transition from known to unknown can make us uncomfortable unless we thrive on the search and actively seek to unravel the mysteries. In addition to exploring the unknown, perhaps we also search for that which is missing. Celeste Olalquiaga suggests a particular dialectic on modernity; ‘we experience a sense of loss and continually search for a supranatural essence that could grant a divine dimension to our precarious humanity’.
Some of us may not wish to be reminded that death is the most predictable part of life. A possible title for the work was ‘Memento Mori’ – remember the dead, but I was more inclined to call it ‘Memento Vivere’ which literally means ‘remember to live’…
As mentioned, a unique photographic process has been used to create a complex and suggestive image. One may be reminded of x-rays, the Turin shroud or ancient markings. It seeks for symbolic status, thus instantly readable but going on to render other layers of possible meaning and the spiritual infinities of ‘seeing through, around and beyond’…
Bullock also writes about how some artists create through a process of photographic discovery. They believe that meaning resides in an objective reality and, for them, art is a process of searching, finding, framing and representing what they discover in the world.
Others work through a process that the art critic A D Coleman called ‘directorial’. For them, photography is a projection of meanings onto subjects who become actors in their work. The inner, rather than the outer world is what matters, and the subjects or objects they photograph are reflections of personal realities. I can’t help feeling that in my own work a bit of both are at play.
Morrie Camhi says, ‘ We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are..’ I love the affirmation of the suggestion that we bring our unique selves and experience to the way we perceive and react to things. Thus in the presenting of ‘Provenance’ it is a complex exchange of ‘who I am’ in the way I have chosen to create the image and ‘who you are’ in the way you choose to react…