Saturn and Melancholy

Any photographer will tell you that dust has a double-edged relation to the camera. It must be kept well away from the equipment but it is deeply photogenic. Floating in the air, dust motes catch the light, and settle on hard surfaces as a soft glow. There is also something universal about dust. We come from it, go to it, and create it daily with all the inevitability of breathing, and dying. –David Campany, A Handful of Dust, 2017

Dust is ever present. No matter where, dust articulates melancholy. In space, dust evokes the melancholy of the Sublime as raw material of all celestial phenomena, ultimate beginnings. On Earth, however, dust famously denotes decay, oblivion, ultimate endings. No wonder Walter Benjamin chose dust as the metaphor for the rundown state of dreams in modernity. Dust is the primary signifier in this work –images with dust, images of dust. On one side, an abstraction of splattered graphite dust, dripped, spread and fixed. On the other a photographic composition of thousands of Cassini raw images of Saturn arranged in a grid. Each side of the work mirrors the other using different media and materials.

The grid and drip evoking two poles of abstract expression in the work’s play with symmetry – or lack thereof. The structure’s strong bilateral symmetry resembles a giant Rorschach test, making an indirect link to another domain where melancholy prevails—the psycho-medical field. In turn, the viewer’s recognition of departures from symmetry invites a playful comparison between the work’s various elements. In noticing contrasts, the viewer activates the work’s broad constellation of concepts. This work was developed as part of Uncalibrated, my PhD practice-led research responding to the unprocessed images from the Cassini mission to Saturn. The Cassini raw images are public and can be found here.