Place & Circumstance

Place & Circumstance
Inkjet Print
16″ x 20″

After finishing my Bachelor’s degree most of my friends (including myself) dispersed to different parts of Canada. What initially started as a feeling of loss soon turned into a feeling of discovery as we each began to rediscover and explore our respective communities with our newly trained talents through university. As the driving force behind the project I asked each of my friends to shoot a roll of film and send it to me. I then manually rewound the roll and shot over the film to create a double exposure.

On one hand the images abstract the everyday sites we take for granted by adding another viewpoint, allowing us to rediscover our local community. On the other it asks you to rethink our own lives in relation to the lives around us, urging us to reconsider our own subjectivity through the lens.

Place & Circumstance further critiques the idea of a single viewpoint and artist-genius by introducing a collaborative method to the otherwise solitary practice of photography. At the same time, by photographing my image on top another artist’s image I am essentially imposing my viewpoint onto his or her own. This dualistic process aims to create a dialogue of self-criticism, and self-importance within an artist’s process.