cynthia greig
For me, the coexistence of contradictions marks the moment when apparent realities collide. When we recognize that something is both askew and right on the mark, confusion and enlightenment usually follow. Humor and irony often color my work as I play with visual miscues and the deceptive nature of first impressions.
My photographs explore the exchange of influence between perception and experience, and the camera's role in negotiating what we consider to be "real." Using the inherent properties of the camera's lens and photographic film rather than digital manipulation I make images that investigate how information can infiltrate our consciousness, occupy our memory and affect our understanding of the world we live in.
Whether considering the visual traditions that perpetuate expectations for gender representation or rendering something as seemingly simple as objects and space, my interests lie in the investigation of those beliefs that define and limit our experience, and the possibility of seeing beyond them.
As a kind of playful homage to Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature my series Representations, combines color photography and drawing to create what I like to call photographic documents of three-dimensional drawings.
Gathering ordinary “relics” from the recent past, I draw directly onto these objects that I have first “whitewashed” with ordinary house paint to create visually ambiguous renderings that appear both as easily recognizable and disturbingly unfamiliar.
No digital manipulation is involved, but the camera’s angle of view is imperative. The resulting image presents a visual hybrid that appears to vacillate between drawing and photography, black-and-white and color, signifier and signified, exploring the concept of photographic truth and its correspondence to perceived reality.
Intended to upset the norm of passive viewing, Representations draws attention to how we see and reconsiders to what degree human vision is learned or innate; how do the visual conventions for representing the physical world affect our perceptual expectations and influence how we see and experience the world around us?
Examining the illusory nature of representation and the perceptual experience, the series challenges those assumptions we might have about photography or drawing, and its relationship to what we believe to be real or true.
