Andrew Child Photography: Portfolio

Gallery Exhibition, October 25 - November 17, 2006

I am delighted to have been invited by the gallery committee at ArtSpace Maynard to display a selection of infrared photography in the center's main gallery. The exhibit, Remembrance and Conjecture: Photographers Explore the Arrow of Time, ran from October 25th through November 17th, 2006.

Remembrance and Conjecture pairs the imaginary landscape photography, iScapes, of Erik Hansen with the digital color infrared photography that I have been shooting for for the past four years.

My own work is an exploration of a subject that has held my admittedly nerdish attention for some time. It's the notion of entropy and how people and the things we build change over time in relation to this force of nature. As described in the second law of thermodynamics, entropy is the concept that any system, if left alone, will gradually change from order to disorder. Entropy increases. Put in day-to-day terms the second law of thermodynamics explains why an ice cube melts in a cup of hot coffee instead of spontaneously forming out of it. Entropy is why, if I drop my coffee mug, it shatters into hundreds of pieces but if I drop those pieces, they won't form back into anything I'd want to drink from. The second law of thermodynamics also explains why we remember the past but not the future. This is sometimes called the psychological arrow of time and forms the core concept of Remembrance and Conjecture.

All of my infrared photographs incorporate some sort of human presence and illustrate the increase of entropy over time. We build things, we use them, they break, we discard them, they wear away. It's an aspect of the natural world that we don't often stop to consider and one in which I see great beauty.

This exhibition ran in the Fall of 2006 but can still be visited online through the thumbnails below. It's not really a substitute for inspecting a 32" Gicleé print in person but it beats missing the show completely.

Limited edition, museum-quality, archival prints are also available for sale. Please contact me for details.