The photographs and methods of presentation shown here are part of my PhD research by photographic practice, undertaken in response to ‘photographic uncertainty’, a term that contextualises the exploration of the key intention of the research to keep present unknowing states at each stage of the practice. The concept of autoethnographic writing (Denzin 2014) is used in the research to articulate lived experience of making and looking at photographs and is a key device for building a methodological structure which informs the narrative of the research. This has three stages; the first emerged from the analysis of my movement through everyday space with a camera which intersected with an ephemeral interlude, described by 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, connects the lived experience of the interlude, with contemporary writing on movement through space, visual perception and paradoxical properties of the photograph, which establishes connecting threads between each of the photographs that formed each sequence. The third stage of the methodology, curatorial strategies, produces a viewing experience (in the photobook and the gallery space) where the aesthetic moment (Kuhn, 2013) was formed when interval and variation encountered paradoxical properties unique to the photograph.  My practice and writings examine how these interventions disrupt visual perception and the reading of the photographs and are key to keeping unknowing states present in the making, sequencing and presenting of photographs. 

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.