Folio: Zo Damage

Large format photography provides endless opportunities for exploration, imagination, and the freedom of self-expression. The simplicity of the technology (not to be mistaken with the complexity of the ‘craft’) is liberating in that it enables me to ‘deep dive’ into the nuances of image capture through the lens, although the image capture is a mere fraction of what draws me to the medium. Rhythms and materiality of the photographic and darkroom processes are of equal importance, from inserting dark-slides, manipulating the camera controls, the tick-tocks that underpin the swishing, clicks and clacks in the darkroom all contribute to how I connect with film photography, which encompasses a wide range of photographic styles.

I have three 4×5 large format cameras (pinhole, Tachihara field camera and Graflex Speed Graphic) and use each differently to investigate how photography can stretch the imagination of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ implied in the image. This extends to exploring how I can bend and expand film photography in an extension of myself, achieved through experimentation, cultivating mistakes and making in-camera multi-exposures.

Several images are available to view in the “From the darkroom” gallery on my website. Photographers of considerable influence include Floris Neusüss, Adam Fuss, Minor White, Alexander Rodchenko, Eileen Quinlan, and Sigmar Polke. I am a collector of quotes, the most profound of which is from my favourite artist, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who stated, “The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do.’ The salvation of photography comes from the experiment”. For me, reading these words opened a new world filled with endless possibilities. 

Move of Zo’s photographs can be seen on her website and Instagram.