It has been great privilege to work with Tam on this project (and it’s not over by any means). I think we both agree that a collaboration is an incarnation of a conversation and it’s the conversation that has been the most rewarding.
The most profound impression I was left with every time I finished a session of shooting was the notion of what was left behind.
Leftovers?
As a photographer of dance, my primary endeavour of many years was to articulate my experience of fluid immediate motion in moments that live beyond the immediate. In a sense all photographs are leftovers, a remnant of something that happened in real (past) time.
The act of choreographing movement with the deliberate intent of leaving a trace that has its own life is a central element of Tam’s work - an iterative process that ultimately gives rise to something that has a form of its own.
The integration of - lets call them curated traces - into our being, is as ancient as thought itself. I am allowed to revel in reflecting on that through a camera.
Traces are clearly memories but also a harbinger of what is to come because they inform our reality. So little monuments to a million dying moments become containers of identity, curated reality. These traces warp time and so it is appropriate to also use time as a medium in video, to warp and flex it.
This reveals the sleight of hand that unfolding reality plays on us. Now you see me now you don’t. Catch me if you can, but a part of me always remains.
I look forward to more conversation.