Peter Cochrane

The Sensual World uses photographic processes and methods of analog printing to degrade the otherwise pristine landscape into something more complex, confusing, and reminiscent of fading memory. Unlike much of my studio-based practice, these images were originally created with my medium format film camera and taken while on excursions into nature across many years. I was often accompanied on these walks as a form of therapeutic exercise after suffering from nearly a decade of agoraphobic panic and anxiety.

This project is a slow, joyful, and exuberant return to the natural world.

Year Two

After years of photographing, I developed the film and scanned it to create digital negatives. The images I found were too sharp and clear, and were not reflective of my hazy, complex, and detached memory. Medium format film contains so much beautiful information, which was creating false memories of too-beautiful landscapes. In this translation from physical film to digital monitor—each using light and color in different ways to construct the same image—I felt some elusive yet crucial element was being chipped away.

“Information” in a photograph is the rendering of thousands of dots of color to make a believable image appear on film, screen, or paper. If a shadow is completely black or a highlight completely white, it contains no information. A well exposed photograph has a lot of information to consider. Working with a risograph printer for its unique process of printing relatively large dots of oil ink, I created altogether new images—neither film nor scan.

Each new image had the same core of its counterpart negative, but different bones. They became like paintings made from closing one’s eyes and sensing the time and place of a far-off landscape. I then combed through hundreds of risograph prints to find the ones that felt the most true and digitally photographed one per original negative to bring them back into the red, green, and blue realm of light. Previously unknown artifacts erupted at the large scale, and a dreamlike haze washed over each new, large-scale print.