Old Time Movies

This is a photograph that I entered into a photography competition earlier this year. The competition was organised by Inter Alia Colletive based in London, to go along with a group exhibition they were showing at a gallery space in Hackney. The theme of the exhibition and related competition was Fabricate. We were told to think about the relationship between 'narrative' and 'fact', and how this can be distorted. Most of my work is inspired by history, especially what visual clues/reminders are left behind. I have worked a lot with historical images and typography in the past (I really should put more images of previous work up on here, so that it can be referenced... one day...) I loved the look of this super 8 film box from the 60's and loved thinking about when it was new, it was still referencing something old, and therefore there was sort of a double historical charm to it. Here is the statement I submitted along with the photograph... "In 'Old Time Movies' I have created a work with themes of repetition and its effect on memory. When first viewing the photograph, it is immediately obvious that it shows the duplicate image of a film case; one image within a photograph; one directly of the case photographed sitting next to the other. When I look at the photograph, I first study the object itself, the aesthetics of it, its shape, form and colour, but then look to the documentation of the same object alongside it. For me this represents recounting a memory, and how we react to identical objects being presented in two different ways in the same overall image, or even one immediately following the other or after an indeterminate amount of time. My thought when first coming into contact with the featured film and its title; 'Old Time Movies' was of time. The narrative of the situation could be easily confused as it is a relic; that is a relic in of itself. I wanted to be playful with how I set up the two stages of the photograph, and create a narrative for the finished image by obscuring and manipulating all factual elements. There are deeper meanings and inspirations from the Charlie Chaplin film itself, and its relation to the themes of the exhibition. Film and photography have conflicting reputations of fact versus narrative, in addition to films technical nature of being repetitive still images shown over variable time and speeds."