John w ford second sight shadows in dust & below eye level standard

JOHN W. FORD

SECOND SIGHT / SHADOWS IN DUST

SECOND SIGHT: SHADOWS IN DUST This project took place in a single room situated within a historic building in Kraków, Poland. It is one of many buildings in Kraków which has disputed ownership, many of these a result of WW2 and the fact that many people (particularly the Jewish population of Kraków) were forcibly removed, many exterminated. After the war, the Soviet influence led to Communist governments in much of Central Europe, and in Kraków the city government took control of these properties. So, the city rents out the space until ownership can be established legally, and in this building are housed a couple of businesses, some residential spaces, and increasingly the Department of Intermedia, a new wing of the Art Academy of Kraków. Intermedia had recently taken occupancy of the unique space in which I worked, a combination apartment/studio that had been occupied by an elderly couple, the husband being a painter. The artist was recently deceased, and regrettably, his widow had to be relocated (an ironic twist given the history of Kraków, and I came into this space that had been lived in (and perhaps barely cleaned or disturbed) for many decades. In a way, I was faced with the question, 'how do I occupy and create an interface wit this place and its history, filled with so many experiences and memories of this old couple?'. What you see in the space is an intuitive, 'stream of consciousness', visual and physical interaction within the space that was the painter's studio - it was an artist working in the space of an artist, a rather strange collaboration of sorts.

SECOND SIGHT: SHADOWS IN DUST, 2013; Site intervention; Krak贸w, Poland.

Press: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/video-shadows-in-dust-john-ford-turns-abandoned-apartment-into-art/

SECOND SIGHT: BELOW EYE LEVEL This current project is intended as a careful, quiet reflection on the nature of how we see, but may not perceive, the world around us. For most of my career I have been a maker, all the while photographing my process, and the places I have worked. I want to go back and tap the photographic record of these experiences, and focus my eye, my lense, on what may have seemed at the time to be the least significant elements of my working method and environment. I have never featured photography as the exclusive medium of a body of work, but now is the time to explore what potential exists in a method that is so much about how we see. I envision enlarging the scale of these works, such that the micro becomes the macro, and we are faced with the potential drama of detail.