ENTRY DESCRIPTION
The work examines the narratives surrounding the lifecycles of plants; how they grow, propagate and return to the earth. Her starkly lit images, produced using large format 5x4 camera techniques, interrogate the minutiae of plant life, allowing natural forms to take on the role of image-makers.

5x4 Paper silver negative > digitised

AUTHOR
Maura Jamieson is a Photographer and Lecturer working in London. Working over the last 30 years in both the studio and the darkroom allows her to explore the possibilities of both traditional analogue and contemporary mediums.

Harnessing the 5x4 camera techniques of the Victorians, exploiting the modern digital studio and creating photograms using shadow and light in the traditional dark room are all processes used in the creation of the final image.

Plant Series - The photographic study seeks to isolate and amplify the innately familiar, and often overlooked, architectures of plant formations. The resulting images offer an array of contradictions to the viewer. The depicted rigidity of form contrasts with the metamorphosis being studied – the viewer is presented with near immortal copies of short-lived foliage. This creates a twilight effect, with microscopic details and heightened contrasts, which cast aspersions on the temporal dimensions of nature.

Somnolence Series - Frozen in the stasis of a dream state, the subjects of Somnolence are presented at the very extremes of hypersomnia. During the periods preceding sleep, different conscious states meld together to form long term memory; Jamieson’s series attempts to visualise these windows that occur each time we fall asleep.

The trance-like nature of these images aims to resonate with a universal experience that resides at the borders of our memories.

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