When All is Doubt, 2015

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Not long after I started formally studying photography I found myself revisiting notions of truth and reality that I had explored as a philosophy student in 1989.

 

The series "When all is doubt" makes reference to Rene Descartes’ "Meditations on first Philosophy", published in 1641. Descartes’ famous text is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first discards all belief in things that are not absolutely certain, and then tries to establish what can be known for sure.

 

In "When all is doubt" women are depicted meditating in nature. The photographs of the women are juxtaposed with urban landscapes, shot at night in central Auckland.

Landscapes that are unpopulated, revealed by ambient light sources and suggestive of abstract spaces rather than particular locations. 

 

In a sense none of these images are portraits. They are all landscapes. The subject herself disappears for a moment and the image that is captured in that instant hints at an inner landscape. One that cannot be seen or photographed.