After the Fact and Silence

After the Fact and Silence explores a state of anxiety caused by the passage of time, specifically in relation to things that disappear through the development of both ideology and technology. This work is an attempt to reflect upon notions of being extinguished, of disappearance and redundancy.

 

The work consists of a book containing fragments of text from Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and a series of images taken within a university photography department. Each copy of Camera Lucida held in the university library has been checked to note which parts of the text have been marked by a reader. Every element that has been deemed important through underlining, highlighting, annotating, or crossing out, have been removed leaving behind fragments of text that, perhaps, have never been quoted, never paraphrased, never been seen as significant.

 

Alongside this fragmented text are images that focus on the spaces of photographic image production, the studios, and darkrooms, and contain physical traces of chemical and silver residue ingrained into darkroom paraphernalia. These marks stand as evidence of the countless images produced and circulated both within a university photography department and the wider world.