Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Clare Strand - the mesmeric, the talismanic and the unsolvable...

I came across Clare Strand's wonderfully bizarre work via her photoworks survey monograph published by Steidl in 2009. You can see it on amazon HERE.


A recent piece in The Telegraph succinctly says this about her work...
Clare Strand’s images are conceived, researched, developed and resolved through a highly unusual and personal sensibility, using a clear and decisive method of production unique to each project. Strand belongs to the everyday, yet her images evoke the mesmeric, the talismanic and the unsolvable. Solutions reporting the ordinary often turn up further layers of complexity and reveal problems as yet un-considered. The hinterland to her image making is provided by a childhood upbringing where a family life in a suburban cul-de-sac was confounded by true crime magazines, ominous supernatural events, Paul Daniels on Sunday evenings, and a flasher who lived in the house opposite.
Subject matter dominates her work – photography and film are the mediums through which her enquiries are mapped. Strand is interested by imagery in which the aesthetic are secondary to function. Taking inspiration from forensic imagery, instruction manuals, the conventions of signage, the mechanics of spirit photography and photography employed to offer evidence of an event or a task, her work treads the uncertain boundaries between the expected and the absurd.

And there is new book about to be launched, Skirts, published by London based gostbooks. You can have a look at Skirts HERE. And if you're in Arles this year, you can see the show.

Clare Strand - Skirts

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