Notes

From an edition of 20 (number inscribed on the reverse according to the artist, but obscured by frame).

My work is made using cotton rag paper prepared by hand-painting gelatin silver emulsion onto its surface giving the prints a distinctive autographic quality. Often imperfect and because of the haptic nature of its production, my prints are arguably closer to the visual traditions of handproduced media like printmaking, drawing or painting than to the more mechanical features of photography. The aesthetic qualities of handmade analogue production such as the tactile surface characteristics,
mark-making, unpredictability, and imperfection are particularly interesting in the context of the changing nature of photographic technology, where an image has become a form of text or data because of digital dematerialisation. Current contemporary forms of digital output are often largely indistinguishable from one another. The deliberate choice to embrace the handmade, tactile, and physical aspects of my work, in contrast to technical perfection, reflect my content and process as well as underlining conceptual references to history, transience and the overlooked.
Stephen Inggs

Provenance

Gallery Art on Paper, Johannesburg.