Emma Gluckman
blindfire, from ther series "distance (real and imagined)"
2010
Series Statement: Memory is a tricky sneaky little beast. It chases and hides and mutates. It falls apart and resurrects. There is an animal inside of me that remembers wrong. Things make more sense when they are dangling and twisted, strapped to trees or dismantled and spread out on the floor.
When I shoot, I’m transcribing my own interior, my dark and dissociative moments. The pictures are an attempt to give my personal monster form and voice. Photography has a history of being “evidence” and “document”, but what does it look like to document the subconscious? As a queer woman who has struggled with identity, the aftermath of assault, and insomnia, I find the photographic process calming and cathartic. I arrange light, objects and bodies the way a hypnogogic brain re-assembles images from a wakeful experience to manifest disquieting scenes. Each scene exists in a room in the flesh dollhouse of my body, connected by ethereal hallways. Stitched together they become a choose-your-own adventure based on adventures I have already had.
My aim is not to lead a viewer through my specific narrative – rather I wish to evoke emotional reactions to mirror my own state. I invite viewers to explore the seductive, grotesque and melancholy within, and the parallel reality of the subconscious.