Charlotte Foster
F/2.8, ISO 200, 315°C, 2023
Six photographic wood prints, each 20x30cm
"F/2.8, ISO 200, 315°C" investigates cyclical processes of destruction and creation; how creation can destroy, and how destruction can create. This is primarily explored through the disruption and interruption of the sterile processes of analogue photography with natural materials, fostering a sense of involvement for both artist and audience, as the agency of the work is made known through the physicality of it; the lengthening and altering of traditional photographic processes - namely, through the intervention of burning the wood prints. Additionally, both in subject and in choice of materials, the work meditates on the processes of destruction and creation within the natural environment, contemplating cycles of erosion, decomposition and, eventually, the new life born from them. In this way, the concept of the photographic ‘trace’, which is representative of the natural world in this work, is pushed further, as it is re-introduced into the artistic process after the original image has been taken.
Completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts/Arts at UNSW in 2023, Charlotte works primarily within the discipline of photography. She is fascinated by the dirtying of the sterile processes of developing and printing analog photography as an investigative of the photographic medium itself. Meditating on the idea of the photographic trace, Charlotte facilitates collisions between elements of the natural world and the photograph, extending the indexicality of photograph and subject, and mirroring the natural cycles of destruction and creation within the environment. It is in this creative (and simultaneously destructive) practice that Charlotte finds a sense of agency and physicality as the photographic process is lengthened and made malleable.
