Informing Contexts PHO720
Statement of Intent A body. A bag. A mark. A trace. Call it evidence—but what is really being seen? The Space Between is a conceptual photographic project exploring the instability of meaning within the visual language of forensic investigation. Drawing on professional experience in crime scene investigation, the work examines how trauma, trace, and emotional detachment are processed through institutional systems designed to appear neutral and authoritative. The images never speak. They suggest. They perform. The Space Between is what we fill in: With memory, doubt, routine, fear. This is the emotional residue of looking—Not at what happened, but at what’s left. The project began as a response to Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), which outlines the physiological stages of stress: alarm, adaptation, and exhaustion. Initially intended as a visual mapping of these states, the work evolved into a critique of the systems used to contain and interpret trauma, rather than a direct depiction of its effects. This dynamic creative shift moved the work away from representational imagery and towards conceptual interrogation. A key recommendation, purchase and influence on this transition was the excellent work in Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s Evidence (1977). Their presentation of decontextualised institutional photographs challenged the authority of the documentary image, revealing the ambiguity and constructed nature of photographic “truth.” Echoing this strategy, The Space Between presents familiar forensic motifs—evidence bags, redacted reports, fingerprint smudges—without context. The images adopt the visual logic of official procedure, but refuse narrative resolution, inviting interpretation rather than offering answers. The project consists of six deliberately untitled triptychs, each focused on a single forensic object, shown from three perspectives. This structure mirrors standard evidentiary photography but subverts its clarity, creating tension between expectation and ambiguity. Meaning becomes provisional, charged by repetition and visual withholding, then revelation in the false. The work draws theoretical grounding from Susan Sontag, who described photography as an evidentiary act that often conceals more than it reveals, and Roland Barthes, whose concept of the punctum underpins the emotional impact of subtle or absent details. Visually, the project resonates with the restrained aesthetic of Clare Strand, Taryn Simon, and Todd Hido, each of whom explore systems of classification, absence, and the psychology of looking. The Space Between does not depict crime—it reflects on what is left behind. It speaks to the quiet toll of professional witnessing, the disassociation of routine observation, and the uncertainty that exists between what is seen and what is known.
