Meanwhile…

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Richard Guest

Original photograph by Emily Hughes

Emily’s photograph currently resides in Beckenham (a London suburb, or a town on the fringes of Kent depending on your point of view), on our dining table. The photograph is a delicate thing and handling it makes me worry protectively at its ephemeral nature and about its onward journey, but hey it made it from Canada to here (thanks, Karen!).

It’s been both fascinating and daunting to see artworks accumulate around the project’s central image. For my own contribution I wanted to make a work that could not exist without Emily’s photograph; I deliberately set out to make an adjunct to it.

My immediate question on receiving the package was what was going on on the train when Emily took her shot. So, I got on the train to find out.

Once I started photographing people in the carriage, I realised it was their hands that would tell my story. And a book seemed like an appropriate way to go form-wise. Over several days, I took a lot of surreptitious photographs of hands. These I narrowed down to a “top ten”, which became the recto pages of the book. Aside from the title page and a basic colophon there is no text in the book. It’s constructed from inkjet card, double-sided coated paper and a couple of staples.

Here are a few of the original shots:

Page 8

Page 5

Page 10

* * *

I wonder where this photograph will travel to next. The journey hasn’t been completely mapped out yet. If you would like to participate in the project take a look here.
If you want to know more about how Journey of a Photograph started visit Emily’s blog. To visit my blog go here.

It has been a pleasure to guest edit as part of this project. Thank you very much, Emily!

Images 2-6 © Richard Guest, 2013

Whistle Stop #2

Posted on May 7, 2013 by drawandshoot

original photograph by Emily Hughes

The journey of this photograph continues. It sits in physical form, almost pristine, on the desk in front of me as I write this. It is traveling from one set of hands to another, picking up fingerprints, bits of dust, and when it arrived to me so carefully wrapped, I found upon close inspection, that this printed photograph had picked up tiny smudges of red pigment, or wax (please read the previous post to discover how this might have happened).
Traces from the journeying.

This is precisely why the photograph is traveling. It wants a history. It wants to be handled and those little smudges are so much a part of it now.

The photograph is also meant to inspire. To become part of a visual conversation. When it arrived on my doorstep a few days before I was going on a short journey myself, I took it as a sign that the photograph was meant to travel with me. The fact that I was to travel by train seemed as old-fashioned as a printed black and white photograph.
It was meant to be.

These are the images I offer in response to Emily’s photograph. They are also about journeying. About those fast-passing moments that somehow etch themselves in our minds. Fleeting moments of fleeting seasons viewed through a train window.

When I think about all the journeying I have done over the years, the images that flicker through my mind are often about the getting there rather than the being there. Momentary observations along the way and impressions of the places I’ve glimpsed.

The gentle rattle and hum of being. Watching the world as it awakens from winter; trees blossoming, earth greening, sun shining. Moments of bliss.

♦

At the time of writing, I have no idea where this photograph will be traveling next. It could be to you. If you would like to participate in the journey of this photograph take a look here.
To find out more about how this project started visit Emily’s blog.
To visit my blog go here.

I am honoured to be guest posting as part of this project. Thank you, Emily!

Colour images © Karen McRae, 2013

Journeyings

Posted on April 21, 2013 by NW Filbert

The photograph’s first stop on its journey occurs in the middle of America, in Wichita KS at the home/work spaces of Holly Suzanne and Nathan Filbert – Ekphrastix Arts. We were happy to welcome the photograph from its creator, Emily Hughes, as it begins its journey throughout the world as an ekphrastic object – traveling from artist to artist to inspire work and alter as a work in itself through posting, handling, and use (follow its life or join in its progress at Journey of a Photograph).

Here is what our hands and minds have made with/of it…Holly worked with encaustic and mixed media to create the collaged pieces, and I worked with paper and pen and then personal computer to create the texts that accompany. The first image is a copy of the photograph from Emily.

Journeying

texts were composed with the visual works and this audio from Ludovico Einaudi:

Again, to follow the travels and creations of this photograph visit Journey of a Photograph

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to see more work by Emily Hughes, please visit searchingtosee.com

for more of Holly Suzanne’s work, browse here, as well as Life in Relation to Art and her Gallery of Creative Artistry

for more by Nathan Filbert, visit The Whole Hurly Burly

The journey

Posted on April 10, 2013 by searchingtosee

I have sent the photograph today. Here is a little bit about its past life:

It is an old photograph, which started life as a transparency, and I have had re-printed. I took this photograph over 10 years ago now, on an Olympus OM-4. The film was Fuji, but I forget now whether it was velvia or sensia, unfortunately. I took the picture as part of a larger project about in-between spaces. When I was trying to think of a photograph to send on this journey (it seemed an impossible task!), I spent a long time searching around in my brain until I came up with this one. I wanted to send something old which I could make new for the project. Something which already had some history, and personal meaning to me. It was taken whilst on a journey, and so it seemed fitting to use it as a starting point for this project, to be ‘taken’ on a new journey, so to speak.

I hunted down the original slide in the attic. I spent a long while looking at it, and experimenting before I decided to make it black and white. It was originally colour, but the colours were nondescript, which worked for the original project it was included in, but for this I wanted it to be black and white. I can’t really tell you why except that it felt right to change it somehow.

I have dated it today, the beginning of the journey: 10/4/2013, and I scribbled some words on the back:

From A to B, and somewhere in-between… these are the spaces which haunt my dreams…

They are more of a prompt – some random thoughts – than a title or label of any kind. The photograph is not especially beautiful or memorable. It is not remarkable, or of anywhere, or anything in particular; it is not an identifiable place. It is nowhere.

Let its journey begin.