Having a nostalgic quality of film and a rather tilted sense of a time and place, ‘A Sense of Someplace’ is a collection of hand-made composite photographs from two origins.
Many have a quiet anxiety. Others have an absurd narrative or a sublime beauty we might wish were reality. They all contain undertones of distortion, and often I think, suggest a meaning that is just below the surface. They are embedded in the past but ask ‘do we always remember things as they really were?’.
Created by hand by layering two 35mm slides together in one slide mount each assemble creates a new story. Each slide is someone’s record of a unique time and place and when matched with another presents an ambiguous ‘truth’.
The 35mm slides are found and given. Some I have saved from bins and some are car boots sales or eBay. Increasingly I find them on my doorstep. I have become known as the ‘Slide Woman’ with people sending me slides from as far as Los Angeles. If you have any unwanted 35mm slides, I’m very happy to revive them.
Over the decade of working with these slides 4 narratives have emerged: Symbiosis, Flux, Architecture and Land & Sea. There are of course many stories that reveal themselves but these four keep surfacing.