my dear daddy
photographic series
video works: slow dance: 3min; the memory jacket: 55s
2012

‘Immobility and silence are not only two objective aspects of death, they are also its main symbols, they figure it’ *

Fueled by nostalgia, loss and mourning, this solo exhibition re-figures the aura of my late father by mapping out a personal world inhabited by myself as a masked figure portrayed in a variety of domestic and picturesque Caribbean spaces. The still images of varying sizes are soaked in immobility and silence, punctuated by two small moving image works and a group of character studies with one unmasked portrait. The presence of my home’s 1960s furniture maping the gallery space; draws the viewer into the photographic plane, resonating with those more familiar with this environment then myself.
This character which I have named Whitey, re-appropriates the long lost family home and ‘exotic’ landscapes alongside collaged images of my father, which hover in the space that he should have inhabited. Within this re-composed archive, Whitey’s poses are portrayals of the saturated emotional lanscapes which I inhabit. First created as a coping mechanism, Whitey has grown into a stand-alone character which appears in other charged Caribbean spaces such as Cuba’s Bay of Pigs; in search of my wider Caribbean heritage.

* Christian Metz, ‘Photography and Fetish’ in The Critical Image: Essays in Contemporary Photography, ed. Carol Squiers, Seattle, Bay Press, 1990, pp.155-64