i spy with my 3rd eye _ Claire Rousell

These images speak to a grittier element of life, like having glass on your tongue. They evoke a sensation of a place and time rather than narrating the incidents, the characters, the bodies.

"Consent" 2004 and "Stealth" 2006 are about the body. The body subject to manipulation and interpretation. The body as a site of ritual and performance in a world that can place excess emphasis on the material but at the same time easily loses sight of the power of the physical. The power of the body. The sitter is part way through a process of tattooing that, when complete, will have covered more than 20% of the surface area of her skin.

"Braamfontein 1" & "Braamfontein 2" 2007: I have been fascinated with Johannesburg city centre since I started taking photographs in high school. Given such bad press, I wanted to show the city's grittiness in a seductive rather than depressing way. The way we experience a place is partly made up of the fantasy we create around it and that fantasy is as necessary to the knowledge of the space as the reality. The one feeds into the other.

images and text

©Claire Rousell 2007