Artist's Statement

Stig Weston

Documenting the world as seen from outside of our eyesight, these images study the way we think before we look. Using extreme techniques to catch a known viewpoint from an unfamiliar location I want to force us to strain our eyes beyond the familiar. From this new vantage point we can look at how we categorize, understand and read an image, and in the same see how we also read the world before our eyes. Delving into different underlying modes of understanding the world, I physically collect the images in ways that are directly connected to these mindsets of seeing. Using photographic material to search and collect signs of spiritual advice on top of a holy mountain I create pictures that can be used to read and interpret physical imprints as omens. Hanging my film in the trees lets the landscape expose itself and be seen as through the eyes of a primal being rid of language and simplifying sign markers. Collecting photographic samples in a scientifically organized way lets the nature be viewed as information that is to be categorized and studied in all its organic changing ways. The way these images are made can be discussed and learned to have symbolic or literal meaning, but the abstracted imprints are in them selves truthful and real and therefore knowable as recognized reality. Without instantly being shown known markers and signs we are led to interpret and thereby understand our own way of reading the world. Hopefully learning also about the other ways things can be seen, that are outside of our mindset and out of our sight.