Clare Strand

Retouch: 12mm Punched Holes 87% Open   

Wunderkammer (pictured) by Clare Strand  from (Mis) Understanding Photography “Photography to me is like an elasticated waistband. It can and should expand and adapt to accommodate different forms but can just as well ping right back to its original shape. Neither fitting is particularly right or wrong – just different comfort levels for the wearer” Clare Strand.

Clare Strand: Vanity Fair By the mid-1990s, if you were a young photographer in Britain looking for a direction and an identity for your work, the question of what to photograph – simply that – would have seemed a more pressing problem that ever. ‘All the photographs have already been taken’ was a commonly heard phrase of the time, a reference to a sense of exhaustion in the medium: not only, it seemed, had every angle, every style, every possible idea and approach already been used up, but also the act of photographing was increasingly regarded as unavoidably formulaic, seeing was effectively compromised by overbearing visual traditions and inventions, old and new.

Interview with Ananda Pellerin for Another

Signs of a Struggle T-Shirt made for Photomonth and worn by director Karol Hordziej and… The Betterment Room - Devices for Measuring Achievement made by Senko Studios, Denmark.

When I was young, I was enthralled by the idea of young women being able to sense the paranormal – like in the movies Poltergeist and Carrie. I used to watch Paul Daniels on TV and when I asked my parents how he did his magic, they’d say it was all done by trick photography.

Clare Strand’s project The Seven Basic Propositions uses taglines from a selection of 1950’s Kodak magazine adverts. These ‘propositions’ point to the early excitement about the possibilities for photography as a mass participatory medium.