Photo(s) of the week, so to speak!

These photographs were taken by Manon Weber in Newcastle, Australia. They were shot on film and hand developed and printed. Manon placed acetate paper over the negative in the enlarger so as to get the white scratchy marks on the prints.

The images are to all effects very intimate portraits, yet the people depicted in them feel distanced and alienated from us; they seem to exist in another realm, perhaps that of memory. The prints appear not as documents of a time past but as fragments of a memory remembered. They are thus decidedly intimate and highly personal (even self-referential) creations much more than they are candid moments captured or even subjects portrayed. They are attempts to render memory photographic.

These photographs remain alluring despite and because of the distance and otherness they promote. This is because, through the white marks and dodged sections of the prints, we are able to distance ourselves far enough from our own personal, melancholic response to encounter the photographically rendered memory of another.