Haunted love...

When I was clearing out my Mum and Dads house I found two cases full of photographs.

I’ve not been able to look at them yet. It still feels too soon. It’s amazing what power a simple piece of paper can have. So rich in memory and love.

Memory is a central theme in artist Angela Deane’s ghost photography.

She drapes the subjects of found snapshots in a “sheet” of white paint, dotting on two little eyes where appropriate to create little ghosts.

These ghosts are the ghosts of moments, of days, of experiences. With the specifics of identity obscured by paint I like to imagine it’s as if you and I can partake in the memory, share in the experience, allow the snapshot to seem familiar

She explains her work saying “Much of my work has been tied to memory. How do we hold it? Can we define what it is now that it once was. Ever present is a playfulness intertwined with nostalgia, the sweet married to the bittersweet. Simple yet evocative my series of painting on found materials taught me a lot about visual restraint, about the power of less”

As human beings we are naturally drawn to faces but without those to focus on, instead we can focus on the colour and film quality and details from the setting or landscape to try and tell where and when the picture was taken. We are free to wander around the picture creating our own story of what is happening.

Ghost Photographs Statement

Found photographs.

Not necessarily lost but able to be found.

A history held within a snapshot,

Unknown.

I put paint to paper and in doing so turn the specific

into the abstract.

Face becomes ghost.

Person becomes vessel.

And vessel is open for possession.

(You may haunt these ghosts.)

Through this manipulation of the material,

the ghosts become us and we become the ghosts.

Queen Marie

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