TEN VIEWS

Text by curator Katharine MacDaid

A view can be witnessed, or it can be believed. It can be both a tangible piece of the world, or a much more abstract understanding of it. To have a view is to contain an idea within a boundary, whether gazing out of a window or visualising what is behind a locked door. A view has edges. Fundamentally, photography is a tool for framing views, for looking outwards at one’s surroundings, for gathering information and recording time. However, photography is also a language of emotion, of looking inwards at one’s instincts, of imagination and the personal intricacies of life. Photography is the act of both objective and subjective contemplation. 

In this exhibition, ten photographers differing in age, gender, nationality, professional status and background, each offer an individual view from the last year, their cameras pointing to the reality of physical space, their images revealing an expanse of intimate perspectives. For some of them, making photographs was to seek solace from the exterior world, and for others it was to tell stories to try and understand it. Together, they have all used the language of photography to navigate their own experience and to conceptualize what that has meant. This last year has been a particular time in history, in these ten views something about what it is to be human in 2021 shines through.