The Archive of Theseus
‘The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.’
— Plutarch, Theseus
This series was the result of an experimental practices unit that encouraged us to work with photographic mediums and practices in ways that we felt were outside of our comfort zones as photographers. Archival work, which this project is primarily composed of, is however not outside of my regular comfort zone. As a gallery assistant, I frequently find myself working with the creations of other photographers and artists. Yet it is the creative ability to construct a narrative that I would consider to be unfamiliar. Having the ability - with my own work or others’ - to take a set of images and create a fabricated, untrue and fake story is not something that comes naturally to me.
Found on an SD card inside of a point and shoot digital camera that I bought second hand from eBay years prior, were a selection of thousands of images of people, homes, holidays, food, landscape and some other extremely questionable things. My first task was to organise, try and section out what I believed might be images from the same holiday - the camera had not stored any metadata that I could access, probably due to its age, but there were a select few images with dates imprinted in the corner, whether the dates were correct or not was a different problem.
I never wanted to actually tell any constructed stories connected to these images, but thought by connecting spaces and places - a theme commonly explored within my work - I could create some kind of mental narrative, encouraging viewers to ask and answer questions in their own minds whilst they are audience to the work. Identity was a problem within the work, I had no recollection as to where the seller of this particular camera and bonus images was located within the UK but I could leave nothing to chance considering there was no authorisation for me to use these images - even if the more sensitive content wasn’t to be included in the project at all.