Automatic Photographs

This series of automatic photographs aims to investigate how the old surrealist technique of psychic automatism could be applied in photography today. Photographing intuitively on 35mm film with a rather uncontrollable medium – a self-built pinhole camera – abstract results were achieved. Looking beyond the photograph rather than looking at the scene recorded, the mind starts searching for an image, shapes, forms and meanings of the familiar. The image that will appear by itself in the mind is an intuitive product of psychic automatism. Relying on a ‘recognisable’ reality within the image, a descriptive title was assigned to each piece, challenging and manipulating the viewer's perception by forcing them to see what the artist had seen. Images caught between reality and imagination.