Unseen Agents by Clare Strand (October 6, 2009) 
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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Curator statement, Esther Ruelfs on Clare Strand
To me, Clare Strand's work is irresistibly fascinating as she convincingly uses black-and-white photography for very different reasons. It features mysterious portraits in which the black and white makes reference to the ghost photography of the 19th century and the so-called aura camera. Another example embodies the seemingly found archive of crime scenes in Signs of Struggle, which recalls police photography. Her work is being shown at the Heidelberger Kunstverein as part of Images Recalled, 3rd Fotofestival Mannheim_Ludwigshafen_Heidelberg.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Most descriptions of the adolescent phase of life mention the prevalence of readily apparent but difficult to fathom emotional acts. Similarly, the portraits of young women by British photographer Clare Strand remain enigmatically ambiguous.
She devotes a black and white series of portraits and still life’s entitled Unseen Agents to this transitional period from childhood to adult life, generating auratic, mysterious images of this in-between world that reveal her interest in supernatural phenomena and the spiritualist photography and occultism of the 19th Century.
Strand's series is divided into Photisms and Kirlians. In both she uses an alternative photographic process: the so- called “aura camera” purports to capture a true image of the essence of the photographed person, some times allegedly provoking hallucinatory apparitions, while the kirlian method is supposed to make the metaphysical energy of living and lifeless things visible when they touch a metal plate. Here Strand focuses on body parts or personal items such as hair, a hand or a shoe, through which she shows us not the result of the picture but the process of visualization itself.<.p>
Unseen Agents thus moves between the visible and the invisible, the incredible and the not- possible, the present and the absent in the medium of photography. Text by Heide Hausler taken from Images Recalled catalogue, 2009.
Clare Strand (1973) lives and works in London, UK.
Click weblink clarestrand.co.uk or browse our archives
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