Tuesday 22 February 2011

A Last Minute Explanation...

My practice deals with manipulation in both the photograph and the viewer. I work with representation of a photograph and alternative perception and perspectives of the photograph.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Every Cloud...




Two photographs from a small series of work i made last year. The irony of it all is these two pieces came about through failure. The original plan was to delve into the unknown; staying with the process of chemically disrupted film, two rolls of film were shot, portraits were taken. One set of portraits were conventionally taken and the second set i asked the subjects to make a spontaneous gesture within the frame. With a set of each portraits i then juggle and move the films from left to right, now there is no way of knowing what is on what film.

Once i decide on a film to develop the other film is to be destroyed. there is an element of risk that i wished to explore. The portraits were shot on Colour C-41 film. thinking i would ruin the film i decided to use black and White development chemicals to process the film. Throughout the developing stage i opened the developing tank to see what was happening to the film knowing i was experimenting i didn't mind leaking of light into the tank.

once the film was dried i then scanned what was to be very thin negatives i discovered a semi negative/positive result. The silver  solarized effect gives a ghostly atmosphere. So having failed to destroy a roll of film i have succeeded in creating a (happy accident). 

"Every cloud has a silver lining"

you can never replicate the same photograph twice, and so unfortunately the Every cloud series can never be replicated after numerous attempts to get the result back i have now failed from my succession. 

Saturday 12 February 2011

Will the real Sam Mills-Williams please stand up...

Hello all whom that read this, i hope you have had a wonderful day and are in a comfortable place in your life at this moment in time.


I recently typed my full name into a search engine, to seek others who share my name to find out what they have become. what was to be revealed shocked me as it was an unexpected answer, the message read:


                 Sam Mills-Williams isn't defined yet.


This realization evoked a hysterical eruption with aching ribs as a result from laughter caused by the direct approach to deliver the answer of who i am as a person. 



I find myself nearing an emptiness, a mass space of nothingness. Once university life is over i fear for what may lead me to my future, fear itself is the unknown. For now i get up in the for the day ahead, make work, think about it and wait to go to sleep. 

Friday 11 February 2011

Starting Point




My practice first came about as an accident. Colour film that i had never processed before got destroyed, when i tried to develop the film. the photographs lost were of my mother and brother just before i left for university, i took the photographs as memento and sort of comfort blanket as i had never moved away from home before. i still kept the ruined film as a record that i had tried to process film but something had gone wrong, i would need help when processing the next roll.


A few months later i watched a film Pollock. It was a film about the artists life and the all important drip technique Jackson had discovered. Seeing his paintings reminded me a little of the destroyed film i had stashed in the back of my negatives folder. the destructive quality of his work resembled what had happened in the C-41 darkroom. 


I began to scan in on to a computer as the negatives were so thin that wet printing wouldn't really pick up much detail. i had found these weird abstractions, shapes and formations all over the film. 


I am now investigating what is photography, and how far can a process using photographic mediums can go before its not seen as photographic anymore. 

Examination no. 3

Examination no. 2


I am working my practice in a Pseudoscientific approach to Amnesia and neurological study, I am to become a fictional Neurologist, studying the chemical disruption of the brain and what is left as resemblance of a memory. all this is scientifically impossible, no one can see a memory of another, but using the camera as tool to recreate a memory, using the film as a metaphorical brain i can represent a quasi-amnesia.

Photographic Amnesia - Examination no. 1


My work is finally coming together. through a series of experiments i will be putting together a case study of memories collated from friends and acquaintances. re representing a memory, chemically disrupting the 'memory' causing a disturbance with the stability of the photograph/memory and revealing an abstraction, to be interpreted differently numerous times creating a new identity and character to the body of work seen by different people.