MARY | ENCODE SERIES 1

MARY | EnCODE SERIES 1 (4MINS/COLOUR/VIDEO 2016©)

A photograph and a memory

The photograph in this film was found in the ‘discarded’ photograph box in the artist’s home, lying amongst the rejects that hadn't made it to the family album.

Taken on a Kodak Instamatic camera in the days of analogue film, it was posted off to a photographic lab for processing and printing. It came back not only blurred and fogged but double exposed due to the camera’s broken wind-on mechanism. There was disappointment associated with it. During ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the artists aunt rarely visited home with her husband. They had settled in England in the 1950’s where there was steady work on farms and they stayed on to bring up their children. They visited regularly in the 1960’s but in the 70’s and 80’s their lives had been forced apart by events during the troubles, not within their control. This photograph was one of the only reminders of the time in the 1980’s when they visited home.

In 2013, McClean came across the photo again. She scanned it into her computer and finds the poem she had written years earlier related to this image. In 2015, she records herself reading the poem in a whisper.

Mary | Encode Series 1 is born.

* encode series 1 uses original printed photographs as source material which are either scanned or re-photographed into a digital format in order to produce an artefact that uses sound, image and movement to reveal or uncover something hidden behind the original image.