Dryden Goodwin's exhibition - Cast - at The Photographers' Gallery is a superb example of how the interrelation of different visual media can be used to explore themes and ideas. The photography itself depicts strangers captured in moments of contemplation in London, with expressions that implore you to enter their heads to try and decipher their thoughts. The etches drawn into the images by Goodwin seem to depict this need for clarification of his subjects; to try and understand through his own caressed contemplation what is going through their mind.
The exhibition was quite enlightning for me in that I have been experimenting over recent months with the interrelation of drawing and photography, and whilst I knew that many artists have also explored this relationship, this was the first exhibition that I had seen that connected with what I was also trying to do. It is an area which I intend to explore further, and the exhibition has inspired me to not only look further into Goodwin's work but also that of other likeminded artists.
An example of a piece that I did last year (which I shall post once I photograph it) is called 'It's In The Eyes'. This was a self-portrait (4 portraits within a revolving circle) inspired by the Venice Carnival, exploring the 'Mask' as the key to a hidden realm of feeling and emotion. I photographed my face with 4 different emotions (sadness, anger, happiness and illness) and then 'coloured' the images with corresponding 'emotional' colour (red for anger, green for illness for example). The eyes were then cut out in the shape of a mask and pasted onto a drawn face of each portrait to see whether the eyes as photographed would change the expression of the drawn face. We are always drawn to the eyes of a person, and no matter what they feel, the eyes always give away the truth.
