Photographic uncertainty in the everyday: keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing, and presentation of photographic images.
—
Dr Richard Mulhearn. October 2024.

Photographic uncertainty in the everyday: keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing, and presentation of photographic images.
—
Dr Richard Mulhearn. October 2024.

Photographic uncertainty in the everyday: keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing, and presentation of photographic images.
—
Dr Richard Mulhearn.
October 2024.

Photographic uncertainty in the everyday: keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing, and presentation of photographic images.
—
Dr Richard Mulhearn. October 2024.

Photographic uncertainty in the everyday:
keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing, and presentation of photographic images.
—
Dr Richard Mulhearn. October 2024.

This photographic practice investigates the productive potential of ‘photographic uncertainty’ in the representation and interpretation of the everyday. The term ‘photographic uncertainty’, is usually aligned with reading images. However, the photographic practice considers uncertain states at every stage of the process of making photographic images. From the uncertainty that operates in the embodied actions of the photographer in the moment of image capture, to the selection, display and dissemination of resulting imagery. The concept of autoethnographic writing (Denzin, 2014), is used to articulate and examine the lived experience of making and looking at photographs and is a key device for building a methodological structure which informs the written narrative. This methodological framework was developed to be attentive to the emergence of photographic uncertainty at each stage of the practice.
 
The methodology has three stages. The first titled, making in situ, emerged from the analysis of my movement through everyday space with a camera, which intersected with an ephemeral interlude, described by Erin Manning (2016), as a predominance of awareness to the environment's potential. Making in situ was my affective response to this space of experience. The second stage of the methodology, writing through, reflects on the images produced from the making in situ process. These images resonate with the state of unknowing, encapsulated by Manning’s ephemeral interlude (2016). This helps to establish connecting threads between each of the photographs that formed each sequence. I argue that the production of a sequence of images is an essential means of amplifying uncertainty in the encounter with the photographs. The third stage of the methodology, curatorial strategies, analyses the photographic sequences in the practical outcomes. The photobooks, produced as a series of volumes generated a pivot in the practice. One of the volumes, Suspended, is a purely written account of the embodied experience of making the images, which points to the importance of the non-visual aspect of the photograph, which David Green and Joanna Lowry (2003) termed the expanded index of the photograph. I consider the expanded index in relation to the development of a projected installation with a sound composition of field recordings. The installation Everything is Suspended in Movement (2024), destabilises the experience of viewing the image sequence.

A key finding in this practice is that the relationship between imagery, audio and space, generates the conditions for photographic uncertainty to occur. This disrupts the viewers’ received response to resolve the photographs’ relationship to the event in the world. An experience, when allied with Annette Kuhn’s aesthetic moment (2013), becomes a productive, transformative space.

This photographic practice investigates the productive potential of ‘photographic uncertainty’ in the representation and interpretation of the everyday. The term ‘photographic uncertainty’, is usually aligned with reading images. However, the photographic practice considers uncertain states at every stage of the process of making photographic images. From the uncertainty that operates in the embodied actions of the photographer in the moment of image capture, to the selection, display and dissemination of resulting imagery. The concept of autoethnographic writing (Denzin, 2014), is used to articulate and examine the lived experience of making and looking at photographs and is a key device for building a methodological structure which informs the written narrative. This methodological framework was developed to be attentive to the emergence of photographic uncertainty at each stage of the practice.
 
The methodology has three stages. The first titled, making in situ, emerged from the analysis of my movement through everyday space with a camera, which intersected with an ephemeral interlude, described by Erin Manning (2016), as a predominance of awareness to the environment's potential. Making in situ was my affective response to this space of experience. The second stage of the methodology, writing through, reflects on the images produced from the making in situ process. These images resonate with the state of unknowing, encapsulated by Manning’s ephemeral interlude (2016). This helps to establish connecting threads between each of the photographs that formed each sequence. I argue that the production of a sequence of images is an essential means of amplifying uncertainty in the encounter with the photographs. The third stage of the methodology, curatorial strategies, analyses the photographic sequences in the practical outcomes. The photobooks, produced as a series of volumes generated a pivot in the practice. One of the volumes, Suspended, is a purely written account of the embodied experience of making the images, which points to the importance of the non-visual aspect of the photograph, which David Green and Joanna Lowry (2003) termed the expanded index of the photograph. I consider the expanded index in relation to the development of a projected installation with a sound composition of field recordings. The installation Everything is Suspended in Movement (2024), destabilises the experience of viewing the image sequence.

A key finding in this practice is that the relationship between imagery, audio and space, generates the conditions for photographic uncertainty to occur. This disrupts the viewers’ received response to resolve the photographs’ relationship to the event in the world. An experience, when allied with Annette Kuhn’s aesthetic moment (2013), becomes a productive, transformative space.

This photographic practice investigates the productive potential of ‘photographic uncertainty’ in the representation and interpretation of the everyday. The term ‘photographic uncertainty’, is usually aligned with reading images. However, the photographic practice considers uncertain states at every stage of the process of making photographic images. From the uncertainty that operates in the embodied actions of the photographer in the moment of image capture, to the selection, display and dissemination of resulting imagery. The concept of autoethnographic writing (Denzin, 2014), is used to articulate and examine the lived experience of making and looking at photographs and is a key device for building a methodological structure which informs the written narrative. This methodological framework was developed to be attentive to the emergence of photographic uncertainty at each stage of the practice.
 
The methodology has three stages. The first titled, making in situ, emerged from the analysis of my movement through everyday space with a camera, which intersected with an ephemeral interlude, described by Erin Manning (2016), as a predominance of awareness to the environment's potential. Making in situ was my affective response to this space of experience. The second stage of the methodology, writing through, reflects on the images produced from the making in situ process. These images resonate with the state of unknowing, encapsulated by Manning’s ephemeral interlude (2016). This helps to establish connecting threads between each of the photographs that formed each sequence. I argue that the production of a sequence of images is an essential means of amplifying uncertainty in the encounter with the photographs. The third stage of the methodology, curatorial strategies, analyses the photographic sequences in the practical outcomes. The photobooks, produced as a series of volumes generated a pivot in the practice. One of the volumes, Suspended, is a purely written account of the embodied experience of making the images, which points to the importance of the non-visual aspect of the photograph, which David Green and Joanna Lowry (2003) termed the expanded index of the photograph. I consider the expanded index in relation to the development of a projected installation with a sound composition of field recordings. The installation Everything is Suspended in Movement (2024), destabilises the experience of viewing the image sequence.

A key finding in this practice is that the relationship between imagery, audio and space, generates the conditions for photographic uncertainty to occur. This disrupts the viewers’ received response to resolve the photographs’ relationship to the event in the world. An experience, when allied with Annette Kuhn’s aesthetic moment (2013), becomes a productive, transformative space.

This photographic practice investigates the productive potential of ‘photographic uncertainty’ in the representation and interpretation of the everyday. The term ‘photographic uncertainty’, is usually aligned with reading images. However, the photographic practice considers uncertain states at every stage of the process of making photographic images. From the uncertainty that operates in the embodied actions of the photographer in the moment of image capture, to the selection, display and dissemination of resulting imagery. The concept of autoethnographic writing (Denzin, 2014), is used to articulate and examine the lived experience of making and looking at photographs and is a key device for building a methodological structure which informs the written narrative. This methodological framework was developed to be attentive to the emergence of photographic uncertainty at each stage of the practice.
 
The methodology has three stages. The first titled, making in situ, emerged from the analysis of my movement through everyday space with a camera, which intersected with an ephemeral interlude, described by Erin Manning (2016), as a predominance of awareness to the environment's potential. Making in situ was my affective response to this space of experience. The second stage of the methodology, writing through, reflects on the images produced from the making in situ process. These images resonate with the state of unknowing, encapsulated by Manning’s ephemeral interlude (2016). This helps to establish connecting threads between each of the photographs that formed each sequence. I argue that the production of a sequence of images is an essential means of amplifying uncertainty in the encounter with the photographs. The third stage of the methodology, curatorial strategies, analyses the photographic sequences in the practical outcomes. The photobooks, produced as a series of volumes generated a pivot in the practice. One of the volumes, Suspended, is a purely written account of the embodied experience of making the images, which points to the importance of the non-visual aspect of the photograph, which David Green and Joanna Lowry (2003) termed the expanded index of the photograph. I consider the expanded index in relation to the development of a projected installation with a sound composition of field recordings. The installation Everything is Suspended in Movement (2024), destabilises the experience of viewing the image sequence.

A key finding in this practice is that the relationship between imagery, audio and space, generates the conditions for photographic uncertainty to occur. This disrupts the viewers’ received response to resolve the photographs’ relationship to the event in the world. An experience, when allied with Annette Kuhn’s aesthetic moment (2013), becomes a productive, transformative space.

This not a grand tourist attraction/destination, it is more low-key, more like a park with animals, the climate suits species from Africa and Asia, so it is very interesting if you take the time, and if you are in luck. The space is less managed or packaged, there is a lot of walking, and the paths roll through scrub and woodland, you can walk for maybe 2-3 hours, it is hot. At regular intervals, there are animal enclosures, there are viewing spaces on the perimeter, these are structures built from horizontal rough timbers, there are no roofs on these, so they are walls, on which are information panels about the animals you may see. Installed into the wooden walls are large perspex windows, through which animals can be viewed, the usual zoo protocol/experience exists in many of the enclosures, there is not much to see, not often. This lack of action means these viewing spaces are occupied briefly, someone arrives, associating the window with the action of looking for and seeing. When what they hope to see is not apparent, they leave quickly, moving on, looking to the next window, you can always tell when animals are present, the windows have several people in attendance, there is a slight bustle to get the best view and maybe a picture. I am stood in one of the unpopulated viewing spaces, there are no animals in view, in the reflection of the perspex, I see that there is shade behind me and patch of sunlight to my right side, I wait for someone to come into the space, as they do, they move quickly into the space, they are scanning for any animals through the perspex, they are visible in the reflection of the perspex; I am directly looking at them looking for something that is not there, in the direct experience of this layered world, the figure hovers.