Willowing, to bend and not break
Katherine Bishop
Artist Statement
Willowing
to bend and not break
The trouble with photography’s function is that it fails at what it's meant to do-
immortalize. Make us last longer, make us remember for longer. An exposure is such a small space in time to capture anything, and impossible to include everything. It’s another way to try to take control of the unknown, and divert our thoughts from the inevitable. The images I create fail, too. I can’t see an image of myself the way everyone else can, and I won’t last any longer because I made them. Photographs are powerful in their means of unlocking the subconscious, making us feel, and interacting with a different space physically. It is an act of faith and a dissociative kind of seeing. The faith I have in the medium varies.
Ephemeral images of rocks, trees, and movement feel more myself than a picture of my figure in my own room. When I create an image of myself, I’m seeing how it may feel to not exist, versus intentionally marking my presence. My practice is a conversation with the body and energy and is the same conversation that photographing holds itself to. Images balance stillness and movement, absence and presence, subject and exposure. This project explores the dynamics of landscape in relation to the act of photographing oneself. The work questions records of the body, and how the act of photographing complicates our actuality.
to bend and not break
The trouble with photography’s function is that it fails at what it's meant to do-
immortalize. Make us last longer, make us remember for longer. An exposure is such a small space in time to capture anything, and impossible to include everything. It’s another way to try to take control of the unknown, and divert our thoughts from the inevitable. The images I create fail, too. I can’t see an image of myself the way everyone else can, and I won’t last any longer because I made them. Photographs are powerful in their means of unlocking the subconscious, making us feel, and interacting with a different space physically. It is an act of faith and a dissociative kind of seeing. The faith I have in the medium varies.
Ephemeral images of rocks, trees, and movement feel more myself than a picture of my figure in my own room. When I create an image of myself, I’m seeing how it may feel to not exist, versus intentionally marking my presence. My practice is a conversation with the body and energy and is the same conversation that photographing holds itself to. Images balance stillness and movement, absence and presence, subject and exposure. This project explores the dynamics of landscape in relation to the act of photographing oneself. The work questions records of the body, and how the act of photographing complicates our actuality.