Mirage

“A mirage is an atmospheric illusion, one conjured as immense heat radiates off a scorched earth. It manifests as a shimmering promise of cool water bubbling away on the horizon however, it is a cruel trick of the eye, a lure that draws a thirsty traveller deeper into the peril of the baking desert.”

“A mirage is unusually both there and not there, fact and figment, born of both atmosphere and imagination. A mirage invites your attention but is difficult to fix in focus, it calls you forward while remaining always out of reach.”

The spectacle of the mirage resonates with Gerwyn Davies ongoing photographic practice — the complications of visibility; the blurring of boundaries between authentic/artificial, real/ imagined; and the obscured portrayal of the figure that ensures it remains always just beyond visions’ reach.

In this series, Mirage, responds to his time spent in Southern Arizona, an almost cartoonish landscape of blistering extremes that is at once breathtakingly hostile and seductively sedating.

“In Mirage, a series of figures are captured adorned in vivid costumes that glisten and entice, yet the elaborate material surfaces also resist a clear view of what lies beneath. This toying with the conventional terms of the photographic portrait and its capacity to expose and reveal something of a subject, is a hallmark of my practice to date in which I routinely pass before my own camera un/seen.”