Andrea Bryant was awarded the Canberra Institute of Technology Photography and Photo Imaging PhotoAccess Residency for 2020. Throughout this turbulent year Andrea has been busy printing in the PhotoAccess darkroom and experimenting with infrared photography during the Covid-19 lockdown. The work we're sharing here today is part of Bryant's series Outside In.

Outside in

My residency commenced at the beginning of 2020. It was a slow process getting started due to the summer bushfires and the incessant smoke hanging over the city. The fires were quickly followed by the Covid 19 pandemic and lockdown, so I found myself in a much reduced and inward-looking world.

During this period a friend gave me an infrared converted digital camera. The infrared images appear slightly surrealistic and gave a different visual representation to the surroundings—an almost scary and otherworldly feeling that seemed to match my lived experience during this time.

 My initial explorations with infrared were loosely based around the theme of ‘Outside In’, where natural items appear but are seemingly displaced or appear discordant in their environments. As these images were shot during lockdown, the locations are nearby and personal.

Andrea Bryant