On Practice
Achronicity and PlacePhotography exists between the fixed and the ephemeral; it freezes an instant and, in doing so, lies. A photograph offers everything and explains nothing. My practice explores this friction.
Within these elongated exposures, subjects dissolve into refracted forms of light and gesture. The results embody accumulations, shaped by movement, time, and varying light, revealed in partial focus.
In the former, detail is preserved in the brightest areas of each scene, while large portions of texture and form fall into shadow. As an umbrella shields from sun and rain, these shadows preserve anonymity while creating a visual grammar of concealment and revelation. The graphic quality of this approach creates what I think of as a ‘disembodied narrative,’ one shaped by context and gesture rather than recognisable subjects.
In the words of cultural theorist Ackbar Abbas: ‘It is not a matter of producing more or better photographs of Hong Kong, but of using the photograph as a means of seeing what is involved in looking at and thinking about the city.’⁴ I’ve found that genuinely looking takes time. It requires tuning out noise—both internal and external—and allowing attention to settle. Like memory, this process is fluid and incomplete. Meaning shifts with each encounter, always just beyond full comprehension.
In that incompleteness, something is held: a way of staying present to what remains unresolved.
–Chris Sullivan
Footnotes:
- Margaret Renkl, ‘Mary Oliver’s Poems Taught Me How to Live’, The New York Times, 18 January 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/well/mary-olivers-poems-taught-me-how-to-live.html.
- English-language version of Sans Soleil.
- Sans Soleil, directed by Chris Marker (Argos Films, 1983).
- Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 91.