If séances are less of a therapeutic staple in the twenty-first century, and the ‘spirit’ element of photography no longer a requirement of its consolatory power, the drive to brandish visual records as proof of something nebulous remains compelling. If, in 2016, I clicked like a metronome through a desktop file of images from the previous half decade, the motivation arose not from any need to prove the continued existence of their subjects’ souls, but certainly from a need to affirm the significances of a life that now felt previous. Such comfort was, obviously, elusive. To trace, in a photograph, the line between my former boyfriend’s face and my own, as though to isolate and circle the point on that vector that signified love, felt as dumb as it was manifestly desperate. A child of the postmodern era, I should have known better than to search for objective meaning in an image.
By Amber Husain.
» Read more...