Adam Geary
Adam Geary
Slow Gaze
Soft Cover
Perfect Binding
68 pages
1st Edition
Published by Aglu/Adam Geary
From the artist:
The Slow Gaze photobook takes a look beneath the cracks of our increasingly fractured lives. Lives in which the ‘home’; itself a shelter to our consciousness, has become a fragile place threatened on all sides. The photographs in the book reveal themselves quietly in a low voice — small traces of everyday life that remind us of our desire to survive. Slow Gaze ends as at begins with the truism, ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’. Adam Geary is a photographer based in Scotland. He has published over 17 books and work is collected widely. www.adamgeary.com
Book review by Francesco Scalici |
‘The Slow Gaze photobook takes a look beneath the cracks of out increasingly fractured lives. Lives in which the home; itself a shelter to our consciousness has become a fragile place, threatened on all sides’.
Today many of our homes have been challenged, many of our homes are no longer homes but rather a multitude of places. As we fight with ourselves to remain in this constant state of isolation the notion of a ‘home’ as something comforting and personal has been temporarily morphed. For many individuals the idea of living in a space that they can call home is very appealing and in many cases leaving for work because you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning or pressing that snooze button is humorous in a sense. We have become so accustomed in viewing our houses through a lens of safety and peace. But, much like the latter part of the quote: it has now become a ‘fragile place.’
During this corona virus outbreak, our homes have now become the very spaces that we wish to escape. Similarly, they are a necessity, keeping us safe from a danger that we cannot see. The Slow Gaze aims to highlight traces of our existence and willingness to survive through an examination of objects and materials that merge together or contrasts directly. The photographs within this collection study the relationship between traces of our past through a series of abstracted perspectives.
Objects that have been photographed in obscure ways yet strangely convey the books narrative due to their simplicity and composition. The image titled ‘Slow Gaze 14’ is an example of this. An analysis of acceptance towards what a ‘home’ has become as well as our attitude psychologically. Captured in a very childlike way, ‘Slow Gaze 14’ is an important image in this collection due to its relatability.
©Adam Geary
The idea that this body of work is somewhat relatable is very important. The Slow Gaze demonstrates a sense of absence of human contact and rather focuses on what we leave behind. The image titled ‘Slow Gaze 10’ however, diverges from this slightly and abstracts the notion of trace as something metaphorical. We are to not only accept what the image is about but understand how photographs like Slow-Gaze 10 might affect us on a personal level. It’s aesthetic and presentation doesn’t differ from that of a child’s scrapbook, in my opinion this body of work is a refined version of this and while it does present to us the idea of a ‘home’ in today’s society, it does so with tragic comedy.
The work of Peter Fraser and projects such as ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Deep Blue 1997’ really present a similar understanding of objects. Frasers work dives deeper into tragic comedy and uses the oversaturation of colour as means to translate this. Similarly, ‘The Slow Gaze’ approached its subjects much like Fraser does, yet with less emphasis on colour and more about what the objects aims to represent for the individual.
This short selection of photographs appears to be childlike in nature and is primarily to do with the objects chosen to be photographed. However, I believe that it is concise in fragmenting these objects and delivering the notion of trace through fragmentation. Whether we chose to accept the images as they are or understand what they can be is completely up to the individual.
©Adam Geary
