In Praise of Darkness and Light

Talk and Reception: Saturday 6th July, 3pm.
at Street Level Photoworks, Free Entry. 

This work explores the experience of darkness and light. Its focus is the city, the streets, lanes, canals, rivers, the open places of the public sphere, the edges of private life. It also explores a personal sense of darkness in the hidden, the shadows, the internal and the unconscious human world. For Henderson, it speculates on the experience of being human and of inhabiting both of these worlds, and continuing a process of questioning, reflecting and making what is hidden conscious.

The working process has been an iterative sequence of stravaging city streets, observing, reflecting, dreaming, and surfacing from the unconscious, and of course making images and writing. A series night walks and image making across a number of cities in Europe punctuates his ongoing research. The cities are not identified but rather merge to form a single city that represents the author’s own experience and relationship with darkness, light and the city.

The work found its form in this exhibition as the outcome of an exchange residency in 2018 between Street Level and Ostkreuz Association, supported by Festival 2018 and British Council (Berlin).

In Praise of Darkness and Light will also take form in a limited run book published by Another Place Press which will also include a number of poems by Henderson. A book signing will also take place during the reception on July 6th.

Robert Henderson is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art where he completed a BA Honours in Fine Art Photography and from the University of Glasgow with a MA in Psychology. He has a photography/visual art practice that combines his work as a photographer and as a psychologist. These are not separate career strands rather they inform and stimulate each other. He has profound interest in the human experience and especially in liminal times and spaces as well as issues of social justice.

Further Resources
Photographic Parallels - Residency Exchange Blog

All Images: © Robert Henderson