Other Worlds

2017 - Sydney College of the Arts

Other Worlds evokes the panoptic view of the asylum, using large-scale pinhole photographs to explore institutional spaces, witnessing and traces of the past.

The work considers the capacity of places and their surroundings to bear witness beyond the usual function of the camera. The architecture becomes a witness in itself, holding traces of histories and events that have occurred within and around it. The work reflects on Anne Ferran’s Lost to Worlds and her exploration of institutional spaces, absence and the traces left behind by those who inhabited them.

The slow, distorted perspective of the pinhole camera shifts attention from simply recording a place towards the experience of looking, remembering and imagining what has taken place there.

Other Worlds was part of my Master of Fine Arts research and graduating exhibition, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: Analogue Photography Materialising the Australian Gothic, at Sydney College of the Arts.