“There is me and there is the world but where does my body end and the space of the world begin?”
> Fogle, D. (2017). Under the Skin. In Dirk Braeckman (2017). London: Koenig Books. Retrieved from https://dirkbraeckman.be/texts/under-the-skin [Accessed 03/06/2019] <
In this quote, Dirk Braeckman addresses the rupture between photography and the senses. This isn’t a question often asked of an artist using photography, let alone of a photograph — is it ever asked?
The medium is typically spoken about in serious tones. It is seen as a mechanical and chemical process that objectively records a moment in time, however subjective the topic. Putting mind over matter in the tradition of Descartes sets the medium up as some kind of “technological recording angel”, with all mechanical eyes and no body. In this paradigm, the camera is hardly ever seen as something that touches the world in front of it. But “[w]hat if photography itself were thought of as a tactile medium that reached out to touch the surface of the world that envelops us, and what if the world reached out to touch back?”
> Fogle, D. (2017). Under the Skin. In Dirk Braeckman (2017). London: Koenig Books. Retrieved from https://dirkbraeckman.be/texts/under-the-skin [Accessed 03/06/2019] <
In my practice, I aim to reintroduce photography as a tactile medium. I want to bring back its sensorial dimension, with all its visual possibilities. By using texture photography and decontextualization, I explore the bodily limitations of a photograph. Zooming in and taking away the context of bodies, garments and social codes helps us to experience texture, colors, and form without a rational limitation. Applying this to fashion photography can open up its hyper-stylised depictions of bodies to new perspectives.
By foregrounding an embodied approach to both the medium and the photograph, I encourage my audience to investigate how they relate to photographs. “Embodied perception implies an attitude toward the object, in this case the photographs, not as something that must be analyzed and deciphered in order to deliver forth its meaning but as something that means in itself.”
> Marks, L. (2002). Touch - Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minnesota: U of Minnesota Press. <
