On Practice
Achroncity and PlaceMemory shapes who we are, irretrievably tied to place and time. The details of our memories and how we come to understand them may change, a reminder that as the world evolves, we do, too. As a medium, I find photography naturally finds itself positioned between the fixed and the ephemeral. A photograph freezes an instant and, in doing so, lies. It suggests that what we see within it can be known when seeing is only ever partial. A photograph offers everything and explains nothing. In this way, it mirrors memory itself.
My practice explores this friction—where photograph, memory, and moment meet and diverge into something else: subjective renderings that conceal their context and relationships.
Within these elongated exposures, surfaces are exaggerated and abstracted. When subsequently viewed, the results often resemble found objects—unintentional artifacts shaped by movement and time, captured in partial focus and varying light.
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 shield identities, an act of concealment acknowledging the lack of consent inherent within much street photography. The graphic quality of this approach creates what I think of as a ‘disembodied narrative’, creating a sense of narrative that is shaped by context and gesture rather than recognisable subjects.
There might be a tendency to see this form of monochrome photography as bleak. Undoubtedly, high-contrast black-and-white photography is, by its nature, stark. However, I see the black of an image not as a negative space but as a space of reflection. This idea echoes the filmmaker Chris Marker’s realisation in Sans Soleil’s opening scene, featuring the imagery of the children on the road in Iceland, an ‘image of happiness’. Through the fictional cameraman Sandor Krasna, voiced by Alexandra Stewart,² Marker reflects: ‘One day, I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.’³
Though seemingly disparate, these approaches, which embrace chance with slow shutter speeds and seek a more figurative form of realism through high-contrast monochrome and colour photography, speak to the same desire: to consider the ephemeral nature of time and experience, as well as the different aspects of this place, Hong Kong, my home. Both approaches acknowledge the limitations of photography in capturing what is actual and lean into the subjective nature of seeing and remembering.
In this way, stepping outside, camera in hand, becomes a form of catharsis—a method of sense-making amidst change. 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.
And in that incompleteness, something essential is held—a way of staying with what’s unresolved. A form of relational attention: a willingness to sit with what resists understanding, to hold space for what’s broken without rushing to repair it. In that act, however small, there’s a kind of care in simply recognising what’s there, and choosing to remain.
–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.
- 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.