Duality 2017 – Sam King

Duality is an installation of photographs which explore the idea, held by the philosophical Romantics, that where we once lived and worked in close proximity to nature and had a strong connection to it, we now live and work in towns and cities, and that close connection is lost. In artist herman de vries' words, nature was our 'primary reality' but has become our 'secondary reality'. Photographed in each room of my own home the resulting images act as a documentation of my life and relationship with nature, the duality of feeling that nature should be my primary reality, whilst living a life which prevents that.

Within my practice I am always concerned that there is a truth and an honesty, this manifests as a set of self imposed parameters. For Duality it became that, although possible to achieve an image of just the windows through photo editing, I would make the image with the settings on the camera. I reduced the light entering the camera so that the view beyond the window showed up and the room was merely hinted at. This meant that the natural light had to be just right, too much light bleached the windows and lit the room, too little and nothing could be seen. It took 6 months to get the balance of light correct for every room and have all 12 rooms documented.