©2009 Karen Logan
Commission for the Holloway School, part of the Creative Connections Project, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2003-2004
My first idea was to photograph the area where the work would be sited, the school foyer, to mirror the daylight space the pupils and staff are familiar with, with my night time version, empty and possibly unfamiliar. When I got the images back, I found the stair images particularly compelling, a handrail leading down, shiny institutional tiles, lights snaking downwards, giving a faint edge to each steps descent. This more ambiguous image appealed to my sense of opening up possible interpretations, of imagination. The intention behind the work is to play with filmic convention, to awaken uncertainty within the viewer.
Statement
In the dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, edges lose their edginess (or find it), stairwells loom as blackened hollows, a pitch blur. In a city school like Holloway it was hard to find real darkness, the lights of London allowed for sure footedness. The quiet was lovely though, a settled stillness within the building
In school I used a temporal light source conventionally used for night fishing. These lights glow for a limited time; there are 400 in the installation. Working intuitively, I placed the lights in the schools interior and then took many shots playing with exposure length and aperture. The lights have an eerie green glow; the shape looks as if it could be on the move, an organic, amorphous form roaming around the building in the dark. A secret thing.
www.whitechapel.org
My first idea was to photograph the area where the work would be sited, the school foyer, to mirror the daylight space the pupils and staff are familiar with, with my night time version, empty and possibly unfamiliar. When I got the images back, I found the stair images particularly compelling, a handrail leading down, shiny institutional tiles, lights snaking downwards, giving a faint edge to each steps descent. This more ambiguous image appealed to my sense of opening up possible interpretations, of imagination. The intention behind the work is to play with filmic convention, to awaken uncertainty within the viewer.
Statement
In the dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, edges lose their edginess (or find it), stairwells loom as blackened hollows, a pitch blur. In a city school like Holloway it was hard to find real darkness, the lights of London allowed for sure footedness. The quiet was lovely though, a settled stillness within the building
In school I used a temporal light source conventionally used for night fishing. These lights glow for a limited time; there are 400 in the installation. Working intuitively, I placed the lights in the schools interior and then took many shots playing with exposure length and aperture. The lights have an eerie green glow; the shape looks as if it could be on the move, an organic, amorphous form roaming around the building in the dark. A secret thing.
www.whitechapel.org
