Proof of Ghosts

In our Studio Gallery, Joan Alexander's new work navigates a sudden bereavement with the raw ingredients of photography and a blog. She uses the space to explore the traumatic tangle of time that follows death. Working with test strips, shadows and tracings, images are dismantled and rebuilt to pursue signs of presence. Proof of Ghosts structures solitary grief and opens the question of how do we still mourn?

In the aftermath of the sudden death of her father two years ago, Joan responded to his absence through photography. We see in image and text how she used her camera to deal with raw private grief, edged about by the public rituals of mourning in rural Tyrone. In Proof of Ghosts, Joan asks questions about the nature of this loss, no less bewildering for being universal. She investigates the cultural entanglement of photography with death and wonders how photography might presage, suspend or process it. This is a deeply personal yet widely resonant exploration of the dead, and the living who mourn.