Zoë Hollis (she/her)

At the heart of my practise is process and the subject of my photographs is light. Culminating predominantly in traditional black and white analogue processes, I feel connected to the materiality of the craft as it is one of science, art and labour. I have experimented with the possibilities in which light can command emotion upon the photographic surface but have been confronted with a growing sense of incompletion surrounding the still image, as it has become a discourse of the uncertain relationship in which photography has with reality.
My interests quickly turned to visual freedom and fluidity, to what can occur from denying information within a photograph rather than displaying it, where the abstract contemporary and traditional processes intertwine.

By abandoning the lens based medium and stripping photography back to its simplest form, the pinhole camera has allowed me to explore the flexibility of photography whilst still maintaining a level of tactility found in the traditional. The value of cameraless in an era dominated by digital technologies is invaluable, it encourages the artist to trust in intuition and surrender to the process. This exploration has continued into the urban and natural landscape, I seek to create spaces which evoke a sense of strange familiarity balanced in narration and formalised abstractions of the natural environment.

A subject matter of ambiguity exudes life.
Abandoning control and clarity allows both myself and the viewer to enter a space not just to be seen but felt, a sensorial meditative environment that draws on perception and relatability to capture the emotion of being.