Eight Inches at Clarence Square

My goal for this project was to explore and reveal the nature of ‘distance’ in the photographic medium by taking the reality of a 3D space and re-establishing it in the 2D realm of the photographic image. I have mapped the space of Clarence Square in the terms of denoted distances between two objects in each of the 13 shots. As well as in terms of connotative distances walked between each shot and the next one. While the actual distance between the objects in each image is different, the images have been printed so that each distance is exactly 8 inches on the picture plane. This scaling produces a consistent and a unifying photographic abstraction of the real distances of Clarence Square. Further, the ‘gap’ between each photo, connotes the distance of the short walk between each shot. I drew inspiration from the procedural sequences of John Hilliard, Richard Long’s performative photographs such as A Line Made by Walking, as well as Jan Dibbets’ Perspective Correction series. To achieve my series I walked around Clarence Square, shooting with a fixed 35mm lens and then scaled, cropped, and framed the images around the 8 inch line across the centre of the print. The expansive border is a significant aspect of this print series as it locates the images firmly around the 8 inch ‘distance’ of the line.

(2018)