MARCIE LEWIS
London-based photographer, darkroom printer and book-binder.info
books + boxes
human remains (wip)
ours
on the isle
automated
London-based photographer, darkroom printer and book-binder.
info
books + boxes
human remains (wip)
ours
on the isle
automated
‘Ours’ explores how access to archives is controlled within the public domain and how power structures are involved in our current visual culture.
These ideas are engaged through a large-scale collage and publication, citing all images used as an archival catalogue.
The engagement of subjects is diverse and gleaned from a multitude of public sources. These repositories of digitalised images include multiple thematics, such as Life in Japan and Early Photographs of Juneteenth.
However, what binds them to the project is that after a period of being inaccessible to the general public, either held behind a firewall, in copywriting or contained in physical collections, they are now available and free to use.
The work aims to offer new perspectives on how archives are conceived. The work provides these images with new context outside the imperial legacy of their historical origin, allowing engagement with a broader public and our present realities.
This is urgent because both our sense of history, personal data and narratives surrounding our engagement with the world are highly mediated by corporate and institutional narratives.
550cm x 100cm handmade collage, constructed of 326 public domain archival images, printed on 100 gsm paper, and torn and cut to construct the final piece, on top of the base 300 gsm card.