Artist statement: As darkness wraps its arms tightly around the city, a light in a long-abandoned photo studio flickers on and curious, grey shadows dance across the peeling walls. While the town slumbers, shades of past sitters drift before the painted backdrop to have their likeness made once again. Drawn from the ranks of societys' fringe dwellers, they are the bearers of ‘difference’.
The models in my photographs are real objects (as opposed to being completely Photoshopped), it being important to me that these images be ‘of the real world’, that they have a materiality to them.
Though caught in the twilight of peripheral vision this is a world as real as any dream, as concrete as any memory, and as fluid as any certainty.
Also known as Giclee prints or bubble-jet prints, pigment ink-jet prints are generated by computer printers from digital or scanned files using dye-based or pigment-based inks. A series of nozzles spray tiny droplets of ink onto the paper surface in a precise pattern that corresponds to the digital image file. In dye-based prints the ink soaks into the paper, whereas in pigment-based prints the ink rests and dries on top of the paper surface.
Whilst the term is broad, pigment ink-jet prints have come to be associated with prints produced on fine art papers. They are the most versatile and archival method of printing available to photographers today. A wide variety of material on which an image can be printed with such inks are available, including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolour paper, cotton canvas or pre-coated canvas.
