Photography is a means of communication, visual communication; a method to share and tell stories between friends, to fellow artists, to strangers. A way to share the excitement, to show visual research and to inspire others. The same can be said for airshows. They act as a platform, a stage for storytelling, to tell of the past, and inspire the next generation of aviators. Defying Gravity is a photographic project that focuses on the preparations for airshows, in the hours before airshows at IWM Duxford when the public is invited up close to the aircraft with years of military history that will be told through the show. The images focus on engineers preparing the aircraft, re-enactors playing out narratives on the wartime airfield and the public interacting with the planes on show. Within photographic representation, I strongly believe that the process used must tell a story of its own, the means of communication is as important as the story and images themselves. The used of pinhole photography democratises the images, makes them anonymous through the long exposure, and blur the lines of narrative, they are no longer about reenactors and display aircraft, but about a lineage of stories that stretch back into the years of world war. An accidental light leak was embraced and used to create a new process, a process of degradation, like memories and the truth of stories as they are passed on overtime. The images are printed back onto the film backing paper that was accidentally exposed onto the negatives, with the final result being a thing of chance as to how the emulsion fixes. Like the planes, the airfield and the relationships that they create, the images create their own story. They tell their own tale as well as the one in front of the camera.
Scott is a photographic artist and educator, working with photographic paper as a material to create new worlds, other than always relying on the real world for the catalyst of his photographic practice. Often eschewing conventional tools of photography, Scott often builds cameras or photographic material, making the surface and process of the work as important as the final result. Interpreting photography as ‘drawing with light’ his work is not restricted to a fixed presentation on the wall, instead of using light in space involving the viewer into the photographic space; bringing the viewer closer to light’s performance in the photographic process. Scott’s practice is based on theoretical research into the relationship between the viewer and the photograph, exploring the ‘performative indexicality’ of light within the photographic process.
