Description

“Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Chris Macpherson’s photography discusses the struggle to form and maintain an identity, and the implications this has on ones feelings of security and belonging. Inspired by the above quote from Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” (Pantheon, 2000), Macpherson produced two black and white photographs, using digital overlays and repeated, refracted patterns to emphasise the way that life changes can affect perceptions of a person. Macpherson likens darkness in his photographs to areas that are oblivious and devoid of information, where conversely light areas represent awareness and information saturation. Curiously, neither awareness nor obliviousness is superior to the other, as both have the capacity to isolate a person.