Sarah Ritchie
Aerial Notes
02.03.22 – 19.03.22
Aerial Notes further develops my interest in the relationship between printmaking practice and darkroom photography. I am particularly fascinated by how this fertile relationship offers expanded scope for mark making and exploration of the multiple which blurs and expands the boundaries of what ‘print’ might be. The differences and similarities particularly overlap in the practice of cameraless photography which by nature, could be defined as both photography and printmaking.
Featuring two distinct series of cameraless photographic prints, Aerial Notes references birds’ eye view maps of topographical marks and indents of physical geographies. Printed from hand-drawn negatives on acetate which have been smudged, layered, cut, smoked and grazed, each series imagines the large-scale traces and imprints of human influence, movement and activity on the physical landscape. While the individual prints have a somewhat surreal aesthetic, I employ the repetition of the grid format to imply a sense of administrative order; controlled and deliberate.
