Corinne Lewis
The triptych series Transmutations is the culmination of an enquiry into the complex subject of Man’s relationship with Nature. With the application of the symbolic use of the natural and the manmade, I examine the very fabric of photography itself.
The camera, the manmade element, uses nature (light) to reflect and freeze a moment. Water, one essential element of life is frozen to produce icy landscapes demonstrating a constructed echo of the cameras intention. The feathers, again symbolic of the natural, spark notions of flight, nature’s complexity and power, of Greek mythology (Icarus) and wonderment. The magic of the natural and the manmade collide and provide us with a moment of reflection into the world of technology and Natural History.
The Greek linguistic origins of the word Photography also provide the perfect platform to examine the marriage between the manmade and the natural, therefore signifying the integral role of text within my creative practice. The continuing battle and dependence between Man and Nature is ever present, with technology at the forefront providing solutions and destruction in equal measure.
“A compound of two Greek components – phos (light) and graphie (writing, drawing and delineation) – photography is significant on a number of levels. As a word, it posits a paradoxical coalition of “light” (sun, God, nature) and “writing” (history, humankind, culture), an impossible binary opposition “fixed” in uneasy conjunction only by the artifice of language.”
Burning with Desire, Geoffrey Batchen
