WHERENESS: THE LANDSCAPE OF UNCERTAINTY
“The photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object; dualities we can conceive but not perceive... Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is invisible: it is not it that we see.”
Roland Barthes
Rain is a fleeting thing, commonplace, yet never quite ordinary. Essential to life, but often experienced as a passing inconvenience, rain interrupts, transforms, and redefines both the landscape and our relationship to it. We retreat. We seek shelter. The world outside empties. Rain is an intervention.
In this work, the car becomes both sanctuary and constraint, a vessel that mediates my interaction with the rain-soaked world beyond the windscreen. It enables access to otherwise unreachable places and offers protection, allowing for a slower, more contemplative image-making process. Yet it also imposes limits. Framing is dictated not only by creative intent but by the physicality of the vehicle and the terrain it occupies.
Photographing through rain-streaked windows introduces a layer of unpredictability. The water distorts, obscures, and refracts the view, separating me from the landscape while simultaneously drawing attention to the act of looking. The image becomes less about what is seen and more about how it is seen. The photograph becomes visible.
