Luke Hollows …Only Here In Passing …Only here in passing is a project aimed at showing how humans are only temporary beings. We come and we go, with only memories of our existence living on past our ends. Ancient Chinese Philosopher Zhuangzi says of death “Since life and death are each other’s companions, why worry about them? All being are one.” This is in reference to a traditional Taoist belief that upon death we live on through the memories of others, this is known as the Echoes of Existence. Through my project I intend to investigate the ideas of memories and the temporary nature of humans. Large inspiration for my project has been drawn from Antonio Palmerini, an Italian visual artist, who is fascinated with the ethereal world. Palmerini himself stated "If you can't sleep at night, it's because you're awake in somebody else's dream" showing is affinity for the supernatural. His work makes use of long exposures, high contrasts and layered imagery, to create images that display supernatural qualities. Palmerini’s blurred scenes and distorted faces are reminiscent of dream worlds, and feelings of detachment from reality. His photography bridges the gap between human and inhuman and between life and death, therefore perfectly inspiring to my project and me. This photograph from Palmerini’s Fantasmi collection, I find the most effective at portraying his style. Upon first looking at the image we see instantly that it is spilt clearly into two halves. These halves is see as representing the two states of everything, life and death. The left half shows a bleak and empty landscape filled only by a small cluster of Tuscan trees, one of which appears to be only a single withered trunk now.
Transcript
Luke Hollows
…Only Here In Passing
…Only here in passing is a project aimed at showing how humans are only temporary beings. We come and we go, with only memories of our existence living on past our ends. Ancient Chinese Philosopher Zhuangzi says of death “Since life and death are each other’s companions, why worry about them? All being are one.” This is in reference to a traditional Taoist belief that upon death we live on through the memories of others, this is known as the Echoes of Existence. Through my project I intend to investigate the ideas of memories and the temporary nature of humans.
Large inspiration for my project has been drawn from Antonio Palmerini, an Italian visual artist, who is fascinated with the ethereal world. Palmerini himself stated "If you can't sleep at night, it's because you're awake in somebody else's dream" showing is affinity for the supernatural. His work makes use of long exposures, high contrasts and layered imagery, to create images that display supernatural qualities. Palmerini’s blurred scenes and distorted faces are reminiscent of dream worlds, and feelings of detachment from reality. His photography bridges the gap between human and inhuman and between life and death, therefore perfectly inspiring to my project and me.
This photograph from Palmerini’s Fantasmi collection, I find the most effective at portraying his style. Upon first looking at the image we see instantly that it is spilt clearly into two halves. These halves is see as representing the two states of everything, life and death. The left half shows a bleak and empty landscape filled only by a small cluster of Tuscan trees, one of which appears to be only a single withered trunk now. First thought may therefore allude that this left side is the one that represents death, however I do not see this as the case. A ghostlike expressionless woman dominates the right side. A single spectre stood in a similar empty land. Why this side is in fact the one to represent death lies in the idea of duality, this is the
theory that as humans we are made up of both body and soul. The left side shows how life is coming to an end, with the decaying trees. The subtle slope of the hill in the background continues to display how the right is death; its slope goes from its highest point at the left side of the image and slowly descends into its lowest at the right, where it flows into the spirit of the deceased at the forefront of the image.
In my own work I aimed to continue the feelings of and in-between state, a point between life and death. In response to Palmerini’s work I utilised similar techniques of slow shutter speeds and high contrasts, I also layered in images in the background to provide the bleak backdrops. My project title
Luke Hollows
only here in passing expresses our temporary nature and the inevitable path towards death and therefore my images display a depressive quality.
From focusing on the way in which we only last for a short time, I continued to ponder how and if we continue after the point of death. A way in which we will all last is through memories, the memories of those that continue to live. I looked to artist Tacita Dean and her work that utilises text to further an images ability to covey a point. Her piece ‘Beautiful Sheffield’ below distinctly shows how text
overlaid can provide a whole new level to a photograph. This piece shows an industrial skyline blotted with smoke stacks, spewing out smog, the ‘labels’ over the top describe parts of the image and mirror the messy landscape of this city. The writing also seems to symbolise the frantic planning that went into newly industrialised cities.
Deans imagery although very different in both style and meaning to my work, she inspires me to utilize text of my own to provide a link to memories. The text that I would use however would have to fit within my project, therefore upon discovering old letters my mum exchanged with her childhood pen pal, 13 year old Agnes from Paris I saw an opportunity; To use long distant memories to show the point of how we are just temporary, between 1974-76 Agnes was a large part of my mums life, yet 40 years later Agnes is nothing but a faded memory and a number of old childrens letters, she is immortalised at 13 to my mum. These letters provided the text that I would then overlay atop pictures of my own mum, continuing with blurred distorted photographs.
My project had started to become very dark, with all of my imagery being black and white, heavily textured. This made me want to adjust how I was approaching the ideas of our spiritual state, this is
Luke Hollows
where I encountered the work of Bill Armstrong. Since 1997 photographer Bill Armstrong has been creating artwork for his 'Infinity' series. This series uses primarily found imagery which Armstrong collages together and rephotographs the images to build his new pieces that he states 'transforms the originals and gives them a new meaning in a new context.' His work is highly abstract and features extremely blurred ghostlike figures. I have taken the most inspiration from #21 from 2000 as part of his ‘early figures’ series. I love this piece for numerous reasons however none
more than its ability to bend and skew itself when looked upon for any length of time, as the eye tries to make sense of the scene before it. The way the dark figures bleed into the lush background, appears to show we as humans blend into a distant past and become lost to time. This image features two of his classic mysterious spectres, stood together in a vague landscape of colour. This abundance of colour is where I am taking my new inspiration from, to inject colour into my work is to explore another more positive approach to the idea of temporality. Rather than looking at the bleak idea of how we only last a short time and are then lost, I will now try to express lasting effect we have upon others way after we have passed.
Following research into Armstrong’s work I decided to focus further on abstract imagery, leading me to take photographs purposely out of focus to create just outlines of figures. I would then adjust the colours of these images to make them vibrant and to mimic Armstrong’s work where the colours flow into on another.
Luke Hollows
The final photographer I have looked into is Takashi Kitajima whose work revolves around the qualities of light. Kitajima utilises the bokeh effect to its full potential and creates full cityscapes of mesmerising lights. The photograph to the left ‘tallest tower in Toykyo’ is a remarkable image by Kitajima, featuring a lone light high above a sea of lights, this is the Tokyo Skytree a 600 metre structure that towers above the rest of the already sky high buildings. Although an entirely different type of photography, focusing on entirely different subject matter (cities not people) I find that Kitajima’s work resonates with me somehow, the feelings of calmness when so much is going on is achieved though the lack of harsh lines. To complete my project I wanted to combine the calm and beautiful lights of Kitajima’s photography with the blurred abstract collages of Armstrong. This led me to head into the city at night to take Armstrong like images but allowed the lights in the background to blur, creating the bokeh effect.
This led to images I think were highly successful in achieving my projects initial aims of showing how we are just figures and beings that are only here temporarily and whatever we do, no matter how important at the time, will through the passage of time become insignificant, we will eventually fade away. The silhouettes of those in the images are vague and could be anyone, this is the idea that people will come and go but cities, lights and the rest of the world will continue, as all of us are only here in passing.
