Crisp

The inspiration for these images comes from my attempt to visualise the covid 19 viral menace.

What most interests me is the apprehending of something that is removed from our ability to directly perceive it. Like all attempts to give context to the invisible it is mendacious. It is conceived to suggest rather than describe.

The work is comprised of six square images mounted in line in the main gallery.

A virus is not a living thing. It is made up of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) enclosed in a protein sheath. It's more like a chemistry set than an organism. We’ve all seen the bulbous, bouncy, spiky ball of the Corona Virus on news bulletins, but they are just an artist's impression, a visual guide, a useful conceit. Cryo-EM Tomography has shown us a version of it's 'true' form but it is still an artifice. They are far too small for us to actually see. At the scale they exist the analogue's or models we usually employ to give meaning to things are just not applicable. There is no direct correlation between what science can render and what we as humans can visually and emotionally grasp.

But why do we feel such a strong need to envision this virus? Why does it seem necessary for us to give a recognisable form to this bundle of nucleic acids? Is it because of the magnitude of the threat it poses, is it that we as humans we have a powerful impulse to discern a hidden predator? Before we can contain our anxiety we must attach dimension to it. Craning our necks in the dark we strain to recognise the origin of a sound or the form in the shadows. We seem to need to put a face to the danger. The Double Helix and the Atom are just an artists rendition of phenomena help us intuitively grasp their nature or properties, but they are not accurate. They are surrogates that allow us to comprehend what we cannot actually see. I think as humans we need to visually contexturalise something before we can really process it. If something remains invisible it is unknowable and more terrifying.

Since there is no definitive picture of these malignant phenomena I have created my own. These are my viruses. Each is a kind of portrait of the sinister and unknown. The slick grey of their surface and the red inside hints at the underlying contagion, a fire lit. The name for this series of images is taken from the CRISPR genome editing tool, a crucial technology in the production of antiviral's.

These series of images are the product of experimentation. Initial photography was done in studio on the light table with strobes and LED lighting. They were shot with the Fujifilm gfx100s with the Fujinon 45mm-100mm f4 and an adapted Nikkor 85mm PCE lens. They were then heavily manipulated in Abobe Camera Raw and Photoshop to arrive at the kind of abstraction was looking for.