Tomtography

The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:37:00 +0430

“Because trauma blocks routine mental processes from converting an experience into memory or forgetting, it parallels the defining structure of photography, which also traps an event during it’s occurrence while blocking its transformation into memory”. (Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence; The Photography of Trauma, MIT Press, Sept 23, 2005)

This body of work concerns the correlation between photography and psychological trauma, the piece is rooted in the fact that the camera’s ability to freeze an instance in time, are comparable to a dislodged moment in a broken memory.

Freud used the metaphor of the camera to explain the unconscious as the place where bits of memory are stored until they are developed. This is relevant when you consider the effect trauma has on the mind. A traumatic event involves a single experience, or an enduring or repeating of events, that completely overwhelm the individual’s ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved with that experience. Therefore the memory’s are present in the subconscious but cannot be fully processed, they are broken, fragmented and often substituted by other memories. Those who endure this form of mental stress may hang onto separate, comforting imagery. Slices of memory that are indirectly linked to their trauma but that help them deal with the reality of their situation or past event.

The photographs in this series are a testament to this process of coming to terms with a traumatic reality; they are both the vision of a person undergoing this psychological stress in the everyday and the substitute memories that may be used to fill in the gaps, when the alternate reality cannot be grasped. The camera represents memory, however it is intended for the camera to simultaneously be recognized as a mechanism that has been harnessed in order to come to terms with a repressed truth.

The images are intended to evoke an out of touch, distorted feeling that one might encounter when daydreaming, the feeling of distance, of vagueness that is present when crossing the blurred line of consciousness. Because of the repetitive nature of trauma; the recurring of moment’s never fully grasped, the images have been used to represent this by systematically replicating the same ways of looking but in different landscapes.

The Sublime is at hand in the photographs through the overwhelming vastness of the subjects and the tones present. The colours and composition are purposefully reminiscent of sublime, romantic paintings, like the work of Casper David Freidrich or the later watercolour paintings of Francis Towne.

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:34:48 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:34:14 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:33:16 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:32:34 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:31:45 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:30:05 +0430

Untitled from the series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Last in the series; The Everydayness of Truama

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:28:20 +0430

Last in the series; The Everydayness of Truama

Unused Cityscape from series; The Everydayness of Trauma

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:17:45 +0430