Brief Statement

I have worked with film and installation and more recently with the photograph. Underpinning my work is an understanding of looking. I am interested in how a photograph can resonate in a given space and where the physical scale, mounting and subject are linked together.

The photographs have mostly depicted curtains, windows and some interiors. The’ experience of looking’ is my starting point.

 I have used face mounting onto glass in recent work to add another dimension to the photograph and to refer to the subject matter of the window. The glass introduces further reflection of the space around the work. I like the fact that the glass serves to ‘seal’ the photograph frozen in the moment in which it was captured. The glass also serves to create a wall or barrier. I have often wondered whether this experience of looking for reflections in glass could be equated with an imagined sense of the infant’s enchantment at finding its own reflection in the maternal eye.

In a more general sense, I like the feminine expressed in the curtained window. More than often it is the faded and shabby window that will hold my attention. I also like the personal associations cloth can have. It helps to make the encounter with the work personal and poetic.

 

 Shelley Theodore 2007