Suzanne Reid's photographs at first look like a mistake as each image is made up of a double exposure. This is not the case. The duality created in each image is intentional. By harnessing the complexity of her image making process Suzanne has captured family energy and used the camera that used to belong to a family member to transform the inter-generational trauma experience metaphysically.
For those who have only known digital devices a double exposure was an occassional hazard of using analogue cameras. These images would usually occur when a film cartridge had not loaded correctly, an error that resulted in the film slipping as it was being 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.
Suzanne Reid has intentionally reloaded the film to ensure two exposures within each frame across the whole film. She realised she had an opportunity to exploit the pictures she had carefully framed up and taken in Canada where she grew up, and then super-impose images taken on Sheringham beach across the same roll of film, in a visually interesting way, so that she could see direct visual relationships between two different locations/subjects. The resulting images, although visually challenging, 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.
The idea of sublimating the dark of Toronto, with the light of Sheringham and seeing what metaphysically would happen was the purpose of the project. The etheral results raise questions.
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.
This exhibition closed on 18 January but if you would like to know more about Suzanne's work please get in touch with her via her Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/silver_verve/
All images are courtesy of the artist - photographer Suzanne Reid (Shot on Kodak Portra 400 film / hand-printed C-types on Fujifilm Lustre paper)
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.