Edition 2013

Clare Strand

I work, for the most part, with black and white, believing it offers a psychological level of clarity that helps to strip the visual world down to its very core. My aim is to take photography to task by highlighting its many uses and it many limitations—operating at all times in the slim corridor between the understood and the absurd. With Conjurations, Skirts, Flatland, and Spaceland I use a monochromatic mode to suggest an alternative reality. I do this with varying degrees of conviction or success. Despite my best intentions and efforts, these images can prove imperfect and fallible. Enjoying these imperfections and celebrating them has, for me, partly solved an impossible conundrum and made (non)sense of the world for me. Ideas are central to my practice. I have never committed to just one style of working, but instead I adopt the approach that I feel is most appropriate to my self-set challenge. My collections of utilitarian images, catalogues, scrapbooks, and literary texts are the primary influences on my practice. I am interested in imagery through which need and functionality are prioritised over aesthetic value; where the raw substance of the image is revealed as it becomes detached from its initial intention or use. I am always keen to try to fathom what this shape-shifting medium is perceived to be and, in turn, what it might be.

Clare Strand

Prints by Metro Imaging, London.
Framing by Circad, Paris, and Peacehaven, London.
Exhibition venue: Atelier de la Mécanique, Parc des Ateliers.

  • Institutional partners

    • République Française
    • Région Provence Alpes Côté d'Azur
    • Département des Bouches du Rhône
    • Arles
    • Le Centre des monuments nationaux est heureux de soutenir les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles en accueillant des expositions dans l’abbaye de Montmajour
  • Main partners

    • Fondation LUMA
    • BMW
    • SNCF
    • Kering
  • Media partners

    • Arte
    • Lci
    • Konbini
    • Le Point
    • Madame Figaro
    • France Culture