'Just as these cryptic close-ups are made comprehensible by their resemblance to landscape photographs,the amazing and convoluted Wonderland relies on some semblance to its counterpart, the known world'1
David Brittain
In 1856 Charles Dodgson better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, purchased his first camera, an apparatus made of rosewood. One hundred and fifty years later I found myself in a photographic archive in Yorkshire looking through the viewfinder of my digital SLR. My concentration at that moment was on gaining a point of focus from the surface of a Dodgson glass negative that I was about to photograph.
Through digital scrutiny of one of the first analogue photographic processes this work begins to construct imagined landscapes. These places visualised through the volatility and fragility of this early photo-chemistry invites the viewer on a voyage into places half-remembered; referencing landscapes that feel familiar alongside some more virtual and fantastic; apparitions of surreal places beyond our everyday experiences.
Glass and Paper Landscapes evolved from a study of the collection of negatives and prints of the photographer and author Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) held in the Insight Photographic Archive at the National Media Museum, in Bradford.The series created include digital photographic prints and video work
1 The essay Material Traces by David Brittain accompanied a feature of Glass and Paper Landscapes, Source: The Photographic Review, Spring 2012, Issue 70
http://www.source.ie/archive/issue70/is70editorial.php
