The Passion

tangle. is a body of work that explores the limits of physical being and the psychological darkness of the mind. In creating the work, I was interested in representation of the human form in ways that suggest it is both present and absent; alive yet deceased. I was heavily inspired by the work of Francesca Woodman who employed movement, shadow, and distortion of figures to represent the jarring anxiety in the space between life and death. Like Woodman, I have captured a lot of movement using slow shutter speeds and combined this with distortion of primarily the face through framing and composition. I hoped to raise ambiguity about the physical and mental presence of my subject. 

By introducing plants as a subject of the photographs, I also hoped to draw on the traditional vanitas style of still life works of the 16th and 17th centuries, which were reminders of the transience of life and the certainty of death. By using these plants as not only a symbol of life but also decay and intertwining these with my subject I hoped to further raise questions about our limits of representation in both life and death and emphasise the psychological entanglement that holds us to the present but also makes us question what is beyond. I hope that my work is recognisable by a sense of uncertainty. I hope that it evokes a feeling of discomfort whilst also driving a sense of connection in the questioning of one’s own experience of physical and mental being.