Days of nothing

This series consists of nearly one hundred photographs printed up from found negatives. I wanted to accentuate the arbitrary nature of the photographs, the random and anonymous features of the images which appear accidental, 'slips' in the usual means of representation. The images eschew the running narrative of the negative strip, they have dropped out of a sequence commemorating the archetypal 'Kodak moment' of weddings, birthdays and holidays. Instead we are presented with the everyday or what has been deemed void or 'nothing'. The photographs are poignant reminders of the unsuccessful attempts to place ourselves amongst our own visual culture, including the apparently impermeable perfection of the media culture.

 

One aspect of the process of collecting and discarded negatives that I had not originally envisaged was that it would be finite. The digital camera revolution was still in its infancy when I commenced the project in the mid-1990s, but by a strange twist of fate, it meant that I was cataloguing the final years of widespread domestic film use. With the advent of digital, mistakes and accidents are easily deleted, leaving no physical remnant.