five year cycle 1986-1991
The
power of photography relies upon its ability to record with intensely
faithful detail the surface appearance of things. We believe,
in our credulity, that photographs are in some way “real”
- more real than other artforms such as painting. It is accepted
that paintings can be concerned with symbolism and metaphor but
the old saying “The camera never lies” is still widely
used and mis-used. To make photographs that are concerned with
something other than that which is actually depicted so faithfully
in them seems to undermine the medium and to invite the viewer
to collude with you in a very believable lie.
A
Five Year Cycle was the result of a long period of investigative
experimentation into the possibilities and implications of sequential
construction with photographs. As it developed over time it became
increasingly autobiographical in nature, the motivation for the
work becoming a process of self discovery. Most of the pictures
were made alongside my routine everyday life, some revisiting
places frequented in childhood. Attempts were made to find connections
between seemingly unconnected, disparate visual experiences separated
by time and place. Forms, motifs and symbols occur and re-occur
creating visual rhymes which underpin and unite the sequence like
the rhymes in a poem. In sequencing, I am not only attempting
to affect each individual image by association with another but
also to load the “empty” spaces in between with other
potential meaning.
Not
an attempt to make straightforward photographic documents of any
specific place, the pictures operate within a metaphorical tradition
taking the form of mirrors rather than windows on the world.
Adrian Pinckard
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