Daniel John Bracken

It’s Safe Behind the Glass is a reference to an enclosure sign at London Zoo.  

Forming an illustration of time loss, the photographic work conceptualises a gap between perceived and physical reality – brushing against fleeting moments within the domestic and the natural worlds. Through manipulations inherent to photography, the images string together a narrative that alters our perceptions on looking. In this way, the photographs become spectres of memory, slipping into and out of sequence to show an affected familiar moment, a nod towards the Uncanny. The photographs become timeless and frozen - a metaphor for memory. Referencing Virginia Woolf’s narrative techniques in Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway, the photographs drift past autobiography - out of their timelines, out of their environments; and become familiar moments that have been forever changed. The images further contrast meticulous human intervention through evidence of craft and labour. The natural world becomes changed, almost forced to stop. Time that has been lost, trapped in the instant, but mostly forgotten in these spaces. Abandoned. The defiled grave, the tree and its phantom limb. An evident omnipresence. Research into Victor Turner’s Liminal and Liminoid becomes important: referencing the ritualistic moments between “being” and “becoming”. The works bleed through time – at once referencing Josef Sudek's Window of My Studio series. At another, observing the peculiarities inherent in safety – in isolation. 

Perhaps this is where the photographs sit: as the Double within nature, a mirror to time. The viewer is forced to look between the perceived and the photographic.