Suzanne Reid's photographs at first look like a mistake as each image is made up of a double exposure. For those who have only known digital devices this was sometimes a feature of using analogue cameras. They would occur when a film cartridge had not loaded correctly, an error usually caused by the film slipping as it spooled onto the camera's internal reel. When this happened it sometimes spoiled the first two frames of the sequence taken before the motor drive would kick in and engage with the film. It was almost unheard of for this to happen across the whole film, as in this case.
Suzanne realised she had a rare opportunity to exploit what had happened and that the pictures she had carefully framed up and taken had super-imposed one image over another, in a visually interesting way, so that she could see direct visual relationships between two different locations/subjects. The resulting images, although complex, successfully interweave the duality of the traumatic landmarks of her youth, what those places might mean now so many decades on, with locations that carry a much more benign quality of beauty.
She asks us:
"Do people visit places of compelling history to experience a connection with what had taken place there? What is this physical draw? Why do they make this effort? Is it to just see it, or to viscerally take meaning from it? Engage with it on another level? Pay homage? A personal pilgrimage?"
These photographs explore the concept of quest through an analogue lens. Suzanne took a Leica CL camera, inherited from her uncle, on a car journey to Toronto to capture her youth. A place where her WWII Polish refugee family fled to set up their new life only to continue their ancestral path of tragic intergenerational trauma.
This is an exhibition of double exposed images, captured first from places of painful significance and then from places of arresting beauty.
Can bringing something which engendered trauma together with something intrinsically beautiful ignite some form of metaphysical transformation? A healing?
Random. Re-exposed. Unedited. Uncropped.
All images are courtesy of the artist - photographer Suzanne Reid (Shot on Kodak Portra 400 film / hand-printed C-types on Fujifilm Lustre paper)
If you would like to know more about Suzanne's work on display at Allen Hall please get in touch with her via Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/silver_verve/
About the author
Paul Vater
PAUL VATER
Paul conducts studio visits to maintain strong relationships with artists, designers and craftspeople who show their work with us. He manages the main C&C website and has developed the online shop where selected works are presented for sale.
Paul established his design company, Sugarfree, in 1990 and quickly gained a reputation for delivering fresh, effective marketing campaigns and brand identities for clients including Save the Children Fund, United Nations Association and UNHCR. Over the years those added to the roster include IPC Magazines, Arts Council England, The Roundhouse, Barbican Centre, Arts Marketing Association, Look Ahead Housing and Care, Paddington Waterside, BBC Worldwide, Commonwealth Foundation, Prestel, City of London Corporation, Baker Street Quarter, Victoria BID and the University of East Anglia.