Virginia Woods-Jack is an English photographer currently calling New Zealand home. She holds a Masters in Fine Art with distinction and an Honors Degree in Photography. It is safe to say that Virginia in an observer and a thinker and in her work she explores a number of the philosophies around photography including how we interact and engage with a photograph, the perceived temporal limitations and the thinking around time and place associated with the medium. Virginia is also interested in presenting her works in such a way as to convey something of the initial experience she had during the process of research and the creation of the image.
Interfering with Thereness
This work was created for a group show entitled ‘Take Me There.’ The curator asked the question as to where I would like technology to take me in the future. I kept coming back to a sense of wanting to go home; a return to something we have lost, a place of simplicity. Photography was originally intended to act as portal to its place of origin, be it a vicarious journey or our own. The creation of a photographic image takes the viewer on a journey already taken by the photographer.
‘Interfering with Thereness’ is a work that explores a breakdown in the basic technical elements in analogue photography which in turn challenges our usual journey into a photograph . Photographic film requires controlled amounts of light to create the perfect negative but the lo-fi camera leaks light impeding this process and it becomes a visible interference with the image. The winding on of film isn’t controlled and scratches in the emulsion from cheap processing labs give a visibility to the negative as an imperfect object. The imperfect negative creates the unfamiliar denying us the return to a known place to the ‘thereness’ of the photographic image and instead takes us somewhere that exists purely within the image itself.
Virginia Woods-Jack is not long returned from her most recent residency on K’Gari (Fraser Island) off the coast of Queensland Australia where she was exploring the fragility and management of the landscape and eco systems in juxtaposition with the tourism on the island. Her work is held in both public and private collections here in NZ and internationally. She has exhibited throughout New Zealand and been part of both the Month of Photography LA and twice shown at Voie Off as part of the Rencontre Arles Festival in France. Her work has been a finalist in both The London Photography Awards and The New Zealand Contemporary Art Awards amongst others. She lives in Wellington, in the hills with her family and assortment of animals and is represented commercially by Match Photographers in Auckland, NZ.
To view more of Virginia’s work, please visit her website.