Now and Then 2021

Being over 60 years old made me reflect on the passage of time after I found a photograph of myself taken in a photo booth whilst I was at art school. I wanted to find a way of pairing this cheerful and optimistic looking person with a much more recent self portrait in the same vein, to reveal how the passage of time changes the face with decades of work, concern, concentration, laughter and occasional pain. I transferred the two images into 35mm transparencies for projection. This work uses a synchronous motor to drive the slide carrier of a simple projector so that the projected image alternates between the student portrait and the newer one some 40 years later. I tiled the piece ‘Now and Then’ for obvious reasons with the additional text: 40 years of uncertainty, 40 years of getting to know myself, 40 years of making art.