I have always had a strong attraction to photography’s ability to create a representative copy of something as photographic object, something that can be used as secondary embodiment of a person, place, or situation. This doubling relates to the notion of the uncanny, something which seems familiar, yet in an ambiguous way. In representations of people it is particularly evocative to ideas of death, a relationship with a photographic object to a person outside of the physical body, and always presenting a moment from the past. In The Uncanny, Freud defines the uncanny experience as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar,” a contradictory mixing of something that is recognizable yet unknown.
One’s introspective relationship with their internal body is that of sensation and not vision. One’s relationship with their photographic image is an uncanny relationship with their body outside of their physical self. Furthermore, medical imagery relates to this disembodied sentiment. Photographic imaging methods have been displaying anatomy through the medium of progressively sophisticated lenses which explore within the body. This collection of self portraits pair images of the body; the internal body is a translucent window to view the external figure. The windows are means of making and viewing the images: the lens, the frame. The blue hour describes this temporal sublimation of a physical trauma – transforming the severe experience into a material photographic object.
