Drifter

DRIFTER A collaborative Zine produced by Photography & Lens Based Media, and Sculpture & Combined Media Students: Kieran Holland, Aleksandra Rydzkowska, BrĂ­d Murphy, Bridget O'Donnell, Deirdre Little, Fiona Fitzpatrick, Dermot Claffey, Darren Ryan, Jesse Hallaway, Louise Wallace, Jackie McGrath and Niamh Schmidke.

Editors - Jesse Hallaway and Louise Wallace.

Tutor - Martina Cleary.

Limerick School of Art & Design, Spring 2017.

KERIAN HOLLAND My photography explores traces of people in an urban landscape. These traces are fleeting, intangible and illusory. I am attempting a process of defamiliarization with the urban space, in order to reveal or bring to our attention aesthetic forms which may be passing at the edge of perception.

I believe through the creative processes, the final works reveal themselves to be quite abstract and detached. They hint at the alienation and loss of identity we sometimes experience in city environments, which is becoming more common in our consumerist lifestyles. I find the street to be a perplexing space, filled with people, it is chaotic and maddening. Yet empty it of people and we can feel exposed, alone and scared of potential danger. My work is influenced by the photographers Rui Palha, Daido Moriyama and writer Guy Debord’s theories of Psychogeography.

ALEKSANDRA RYDZKOWSKA The project is a reflection on the universality of the places around us.

It is a search for the common element of spaces, which cannot be identified and assigned to any specific geographic location. As a consequence photographed places and people are often difficult to locate at one point on the map, offering us an impression of equality in the world.

BRĂ?D MURPHY My work is mainly concerned with the process of remembering and re-remembering. Our memories are often corrupted through subliminal interferences, such as new experiences or others opinions, giving us an artificial view of the past. Memory is not static. Our thoughts and memories overlap and merge, forming the illusion of recollection.

Through digital landscape photography and medium format portrait photography, I explore the limitations of memory. By digitally overlaying photographs from a modern Nikon DSLR, and film from a seventy year old Zeiss Icon Nettar, I hope to create a surreal reality, closer to our unstable and forever evolving memories. I generally visualize my memories through a series of images lacking color, similar to my medium format photographs. However, I believe that layering the vibrant digital images, adds a fragment that is more comparable to reality, a snippet of honesty and authenticity. My finished work portrays the remains of memories and the unrecognizable traces left behind.

BRIDGET O' DONNELL

I use photography as a means to document the world around me. My choice of subject comes from my interest in ideas about beauty, and emotional connection, in particular people and a sense of place in the environment. This idea of a sense of place, is also about the disconnect between the place you are right now, and the place you have come from or wish to go to. We are always on the move, but fragments remain left behind.

DEIRDRE LITTLE The theory of synchronicity is of great interest to me in my work. Through my creative process and interpretation, I use it to construct images using rare materials and often working in difficult circumstances. My work strays towards experimental processes, with strong influences from performance and sculpture. The work is almost always created in camera with little post-production.

Purposefully setting operating conditions against a favorable outcome, in this work I have sought to evoke synchronicity and chance. The results, which are salvaged despite certain stages of sabotage within the medium, blur the lines between what is real and what is imagined.

FIONA FITZPATRICK Photography plays an important role in my working process, helping me investigate sculptural ideas further. I use inexpensive plastic cameras, capturing images through trial and error. My interests are in the fragmented, especially in the architecture and texture of derelict spaces that hold many memories. Using a plastic (shoot from the hip) camera means that these are not precision instruments. They are however a window into a world. This body of work is a continual experimental journey, as a way to re-experience the everyday.

DERMOT CLAFFEY My photographic work is often an exploration into my immediate surroundings, abstract architectural angles or slightly surreal situations. I admire abstract photographers such as Paul Strand or the uncanny work of Gregory Crewdson, with different possibilities available through advancing photographic technology.

Through observations and return visits to abandoned structures, or things slightly quirky when remembered, I try to capture the feeling of what it might have been like, before the road to ruin, or what can still be offered in the future. I also like to use lighting, or the concealment of an object, diffusing the original image to reveal something personal to me.

DARREN RYAN From Nosferatu to Farewell My Lovely, my work is heavily influenced by Gothic Literature and Film Noir.

The pieces are shot on various formats over several months and through the genre of Street Photography. I attempt to capture a brooding darkness, along with surreal and ethereal imagery in everyday life. I constantly seek the unusual and unique, the odd and the misunderstood, that fleeting moment of madness, that indescribable feeling, frozen in time.

JESSE HALLAWAY When I’m photographing I try to find a natural pose. I want the person to not notice, or at least feel comfortable enough to reveal something truthful in their expression.

Get close and shoot when their eyes are on your face, not the camera lens.

LOUISE WALLACE Invisible Connections - The People who looked at me.

Paris 17th April 2017 I recently spent a day traveling through Paris. I really enjoy the idea of being totally unknown, a stranger in a new place and everything that involves. I wanted to try and capture the idea of not belonging. I find it interesting as a photographer to look at peoples reactions and response to the camera. I set myself the challenge of only taking photos of people who stared at me. In the hustle and bustle of the busy streets people can take one micro second of their life and make a momentary connection, spark with you. As soon as either person looks away that invisible connection in broken and you both move on. This is a constant occurrence with travel and city life, and also in a kind of encounter true to photography. The pictures I took are a collection of reactions and the dynamic relationship between the viewer and subject.

JACKIE MC'GRATH My recent work is an investigation of the urban and cultural landscape of New York City, and my first foray into working with film photography. I find there to be a surprise element to working with film, an unknown factor that peaks with the development of a film roll.

When taking these photographs, I avoided tourist spots and sought a truer, more honest reality that connected with the inspiring culture of art in New York. I wanted to explore the essence of street life, and the sense of passing through.

NIAMH SCHMIDKE In photography, my work explores ideas of man-made systems.

I'm interested in marking a distinction from digital work, in the use of traditional 35 and 120 mm film. It is the variances in the hand development of film that I am exploiting, as a way to compare a human understanding with a machine task. Within this process, I'm looking at how my specific interaction with a place and time affects how I see, and present what I see to a viewer. In this series I allowed myself to wander the streets of New York with the simple intent of capturing the city as it appeared to me. Because of this aim, there are contrasts between small moments of human interaction and an overwhelming sense of scale as well as a sense of alienation, or the alien within this environment. This constant between two ways of viewing is something consistent throughout my work.

Limited Edition Zine Š Students of Photography & Lens Based Media and Sculpture & Combined Media, LSAD - Spring 2017.

Cover image by Aleksandra Rydzkowska.