LOVE NOTES

Date of work: 2018 – ongoing

Unique gelatin silver prints from a hand-folded and expired 6×7 film negatives
Ilford warm-tone glossy fiber-based paper, hand-washed with selenium archival wash.
Film expired from the 1990s onward

Brief synopsis
Writing and photography have much in common. Both obey the speed of the body and specifically the hand. Both can also damage forgetfulness.
A love note is a romantic way to show one’s feelings via language. A photograph can serve the same purpose.
These ‘Love Notes’ images, taken in and around my family’s former farmlands lost to near-bankruptcy, are made from negatives I fold and send to my parents in Australia. They ‘read’ the negatives, refold them, and return them to me. The negative, materially and emotionally, becomes part of the photograph’s story. Folds and cracks trespass the images and the lands they represent.
Thus the ‘writing’ in these photographs happens in part in the physical act of folding and unfolding.

All images ©Odette England