Terracotta Terrains

Blurring Lines – Between the Consciously and Unconsciously Seen

I remember learning as a child that our brains automatically fill in areas our eyes don’t actually see. It led to a lifelong fascination with potential differences between what we consciously and unconsciously see. I find myself asking: is what I actually see, what I think I see? How much editing is going on in my brain? Whether I have a camera in hand or not, I find myself constantly reconstituting objects or scenes in my surroundings. I wonder how quickly do I have to move my head to outpace the capture rate of my retina? If I move quick enough, do the forms and colours that I look at merge in my head (as they do in my camera) before being instantly edited by my brain into that which I generally accept as seen?

For me, the capacities of digital photography opened the door to conducting experiments that explore all this outside my head. In-Camera Multiple Exposures utilise programmed algorithms to prioritise, for example, darker elements over lighter ones while instantaneously stacking images. With this knowledge, I intuitively reassemble elements from my surroundings inside the camera, creating images that reflect the manifold ways we can perceive the world around us.

As the series title indicates, the images in Terracotta Terrains were developed using roof tiles seen from a single balcony. While variance in the shutter speed, lens, camera movement, and frame rate all played a role, it was the sun that crafted each of the images. Not only did it forge shadows and cast highlights, helping to define textures in the images, its presence and absence painted the cool and warm tones dominating the images.