Ethereal

“Art seems to me to be a state of soul more than anything else.” -Marc Chagall

Ethereal presences in holography and photography
Proc. SPIE, Vol. 6488, 64880M (2007); DOI:10.1117/12.726143
Online Publication Date: 20 February 2007
Conference Date: Sunday 21 January 2007
Conference Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Conference Title: Practical Holography XXI: Materials and Applications
Conference Chairs: Roger A. Lessard, Hans I. Bjelkhagen

This paper is about the ideas of creating 'Presence of Absence' in post-mortem photography and holography, from both historical and lesser-known images as a reference. It describes that death can bean elegant yet horrific aesthetic, the photograph may be beautify screened and yet obscene in its content. "In essence one can be a voyeur, experiencing a mere visual whisper of the true nature of the subject." It is stated that within contemporary photography, death is now presented as a sensual, and at times, a sensationalised art form. In exploring post-mortem imagery, both in holography and conventional photography, absence presents an aspect of death as startling in its unanimated form and detailed in its finite examination of mortality.

Even though my photographs are not dealing with the post-mortem in any way, the basic idea is still the same. The fact that with this absence of life, still created are feelings of unexplainable divinity, and in a way we are adding life to the lifeless. This goes along with my concept of allowing nature to take over run down, essentially lifeless areas. I want to create a feeling of life presence through organic elements.