Ben Brown

Memory as a Photographic Practice

Through my practice, I contemplate the form and function of memory, using my own engagement with photographic processes to achieve an understanding of our collective relationship with the past. I delicately balance digital and analogue techniques in order to grasp the transience of memory, creating unique lumen prints that serve as contemplative foundations in my understanding of technology as a mediator of our experiences. I intentionally use unfixed darkroom papers to intervene in the permanence of photographic recordings, accepting memory as ephemeral and allowing my work to age and fade organically as it is exposed to ambient light.

Each piece serves as a reclamation of my process, investigating my own desire to possess memory in a tangible form. The dreamlike colour and soft rendering of the lumen process acts as a transformative layer, reimagining digital materials as painterly demonstrations of the past. The present is embodied through my touch and environment, as the oils from my skin and ambient daylight become raw materials in the work. Through this intersection I am examining the true form of memory.