The Philosopher’s Stone

Yet this surface, transparent as air, is the plane dividing two realities, or rather, dividing reality from illusion.

Richard Lunn- Mirrors

About the series

The Philosopher’s Stone is a series or large scale black and white photographs concerned with the process of turning fact to fiction.

I have used the genre of the still life in picture making as a departure point to explore the cameras efficiency in recording solid objects onto a flat surface.

A single object is placed before the camera, enlarged or reduced to occupy an identical space. The space becomes an arena for the play of language and memory. Each selected object records an inventory of a narrative: the well-thumbed book, the time worn stone.

The mimetic function of the camera – ‘moment of truth’  – undergoes a process of manipulation by way of the intervention of the artist, through aesthetic punctuations (pale pencil lines, fragmented text, tape) onto the surface of the photograph.

The complete image then belongs to a process of steps from fact to fiction. By manipulating information, content and context by way of surface layering, the final image divides and extends the ‘moment’ into fiction.

This exhibition was shown in Gallery 1 at the Australian Centre for Photography in May/June 1991 and at Photospace, Canberra School of Art in April/May 1991.