24_h_contact_sheet

This set of images was inspired by Jan Dibbets’ The Shortest Day at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1970) in which he explored the ways in which light changes and how each photographs show the encounter between light and structure, more precisely the passage of dispersive light through the structuring influence of an architectural element, most frequently a window (MoMA, 2020). I am interested in the notion that only a photograph can capture that particular beam of light and if you miss it, you have to wait 24 hours, or even another year or…

 I shot these on the Winter Solstice (22nd December 2019). They are presented as a contact sheets and were shot on colour film. It is getting harder to find processing houses that can process colour film and produce them as a traditional contact sheet.

The process was quite involved and keeping awake for so long (getting up every hour with the sound of an alarm was not fun) and reminds me of the series of images titled One Year Performance 1980–1981 by Tehching Hsieh that was on display until recently at the Tate Modern (Liverpool). One day was hard enough, never mind a whole year.

It would be interesting to see this set of images shot during the Summer Solstice, I will ask if the cats are up for another shoot (at least they got some sleep).