Stella Baraklianou, "Bodegone 5" (2006), medium C-type print, 40 x 40cm.

“Threads and other stories”

In this paper I will engage with the photographic act via an unusual methodology: that of strings and threads. Personal stories and stories/examples from art history will be weaved together in an attempt to approach the photographic act from its very construction. In a sense, my personal engagement with my studio practice has led me to seek methodological answers concerning the very construction of the photographic frame. Therefore, apart from my own personal working materials, of how I go about constructing my photographs, I will look into perspective construction, ranging from the classical Albertian model through to the early photographic boxes of Victorian times. Traversing the narrative of perspective boxes (17th century Holland), photographic boxes (Lady Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, Victorian England) and lastly the domestic space of a cantarero (cooling cabinet for the preservation of foodstuffs – Juan Sanchez Cotan), we find that all of them had a connection with either the use of strings, or were connected to a domestic understanding of space. So, with the linking element, literally and metaphorically, of threads and strings, I interpret my personal photographic projects as a still life constructed in an enclosed space, suspended and held in the photographic frame, via the use of threads.