Author Archives: Joan Alexander

Proof of Ghosts began as blog to document a body of work I developed through an Artists Career Enhancement grant from Arts Council Northern Ireland.   Originally the project was about how we establish identity through recording time. I was planning to explore it through looking at how photography reveals presence by capturing absences in storiesContinue reading “Proof of Ghosts”

 Originally the project was about how we establish identity through recording time. I was planning to explore it through looking at how photography reveals presence by capturing absences in stories eg: through negatives, shadows, shutters and the involuntary/sub conscious , and my methodology was based on shadow catching.  “One’s relationship to one’s own shadow -whichContinue reading “Dust to dust”

The Shock of the Now iv Pareidolia; the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. I’ve always loved working with negative space, the area of absence naturally overlooked, the parts that can get cut out. Looking through the wake contact sheets he suddenly appeared in full lifeContinue reading “Pareidolia”

Shock of Now iii; Trace ’The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent.  From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant’. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida p80. The lines on his face, distinctive, deep lines for such a youthful looking man, aroundContinue reading “Death Mask”

Testaments i; The garden during his wake; the mountain where he died In the first full bloom of spring. Both beautiful, dear and familiar places I rushed to. Really rushed to by slow flight as slow shock descended. I was searching and recording as the wake settled into the house.  Building up a cache of filmsContinue reading “The Shock of Now i-ii”

Forebode/beforehand/gathering/make aware/correspondence. I lived with a foreboding, not the same as the ingrained familiar dread of losing him since discovering death and finitude as a child,  this was a new strong, deep and distracting  forebode….on and off since early 2018 but steadily gaining pace and momentum until it suddenly subsided 2 weeks before he died. I’dContinue reading “Foreboding”

i) Scanned snapshots photos from 1980’s-90’s  “….A misunderstanding;  I thought I could describe a ‘state’; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history”. CS Lewis; A Grief Observed, p47 It is a process, I agreed but I needed aContinue reading “Absent History i-ii”