In Search of a New Dawn

It is early morning on a deserted North German beach. The 1937 film camera picks up the first rays of the day’s sun alighting on the sand and waves. Using a technique of in-camera multiple exposure, where several images are taken on a single section of film before it is wound on, Anna abstracts the scene into something dreamlike and transcendental.

Coming in a steady stream, wave after wave of images, soothing and absorbing, alight on the viewer’s eye, echoing the silent rush of dawn waves to shore. The images of wave-swell become gradually hypnotic and by a process of affect encourage the viewer to surrender to a sense of time- and place-lessness.

This could be a generic beach, anywhere: a prototype beach. Visions of first mornings in idealized sci-fi worlds or the golden glow of a ‘paradise lost’ but now restored compete with a purely visual geometric interplay of light and dark on the brooding sand with its frothy, cyan waves.

There is a radical sense that in this moment, all that has passed is absolved and a future of promise remains – once the final wave pulls out.

Related reading:

• Plato’s Phaedrus
• Paradise Lost – John Milton
• The Spell of the Sensuous – David Abram

Prints Available

• C-type (chromogenic) prints,  mounted on 3mm white pvc foamex: 40cm x 40cm, edition of 20 with 1 AP
• C-type prints: 70cm x 70cm, edition of 20
• Archival pigment prints:
  • 40cm x 40cm, edition of 30
  • 30cm x 30cm, edition of 30

Made from digital scans of medium format film negatives, taken with a 1937 Zeiss Ikon camera.

Selected Installation Views

Staithes Studios Gallery

Staithes Studios Gallery

Staithes Studios Gallery