Poet of Light: The Photography of Amy Friend
Left: Before the War. 2014 Right: It Could Be Anywhere. 2017 BETWEEN WORDS & IMAGES While the focus of this blog has been on visual poetry, the recent work of Canadian artist Amy Friend has caused me to reconsider this. Her Dare Alla Luce series (which has pleasantly haunted me for some time) has always read to me like an image based form of poetry, so this post is a thought experiment of sorts. Dare Alla Luce (translated from Italian as Giving to the Light ) is a startlingly unique confluence of photography, drawing (with light!) and editing/curating. While these photographs are very much about memory and senescence, they are also a poetic form of meta-photography as seen in their self-reflexive nature. In this manner she establishes a dialogue or conversation with the long-gone unknown photographers (the artist's words here), one in which she uses the medium itself to interrogate its own history, material and nature. A deep rumination on time, the precious precar...