Next Generation 2015 Interview with Photographer Imogen Freeland

Next Generation 2015: Future Greats

Contemporary photography is entering a limitless post-analogue phase of innovation. Aesthetica has handpicked a selection of promising young photographers working across documentary, fine art and experimental digital media, in partnership with London College of Communication. These creatives are pushing the limits of photography through cross-platform experimentation. We interview London-based photographer and London College of Communication alumnus Imogen Freeland.

Imogen’s work explores the intersection between photography, representation and control and interrogates both the question of “owning” self-expression in the relationship between artist and subject, and the validity of photography itself as a means of representing reality. Her latest body of work, Your Companion in Silence, attempts to explore the spaces between reality and representation and to restore some meaning to the notion of “connections” in a digital era in which both the practice of art and the usage of social media offer us the means to craft personae and build idealised selves. Beginning and ending with a relationship in pieces, Your Companion in Silence chronicles a network of acquaintances, friends and lovers as they pass through the prism of the photographer’s lens. Aware of the conflict between her responsibility as an artist to convey truth as well as the trust placed in her by each subject, and the unavoidable distortions created by the process of artistic interpretation, Freeland allows her own self-consciousness and uncertainty to inform both the words and images of the finished work. The result is, on the one hand, a study on the concept of authorship, and on the other, a simple story of someone trying – and sometimes failing – to reconnect with the people who ought to matter.

To explore more of Imogen’s work, visit  www.imogenfreeland.com and pick up the August/September issue of Aesthetica.

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