Seconds from Yesterday

They are histories.
They are ghostings.
They are people we once knew.
They are people we hope to know.

These images are explorations ­ documentations of my everyday experiences. From these mostly amorphous, fragmented glimpses of social interactions our temporal unconscious selects the moment. It's the fluidity we recognize as an event, daily life or time passing which is illustrated in an almost painterly way. Unlike the artist painting a stroke across the canvas, by freezing in place I let the motion of others recreate the dancing movements of interaction.

In my exploration of family, friends and acquaintances I began using a digital camera with long exposures, blowing out highlights and blurring the people and surroundings. The exposures give the images a feeling of warmth, inviting you to spend time and explore the frame.

Digital media seems a perfect match for this series. We keep talking about the permanence of the medium, the changes in storage and will these images just fade away at some point. By using pigment inks on paper, the imagery should last 100-200 years. Images archived on CD don't have the same life expectancy.

With these photographs I have recorded the past and future ­ memories and memories in the making, your conscious and unconscious communications.

People reveal themselves through their body language and how they interact with others. Your interaction with these images may be my next exploration

Heather Protz 2003