Photography and Music
Cyril Cook’s art investigates modern adaptations to the practice of identity. His work examines the self through its (sometimes) polyphonic personae, both public and private, seeking the self through clues from its own self-deception. Because contemporary interface with reality is increasingly through abstraction, and because there is a growing chasm between images and their role of recording real events, the grounding process of self-developed film photography is used to explore the meaning and catalogue the variety of these personae. A variety of images are used to complete the portrait of a self. Themes besides any given individual self are expressed through photographs of multiple individuals, using what is in common to express the unique.
Although cameras are a wonderful tool for the examination and documentation of identity, the usual isolation of a photograph in time often prohibits photography’s investigation of the self through its activity. Since activity can also betray the structure of an identity, music is used to explore relations between different personae. Whether the notes moving between these relationships are considered consonant or dissonant depend upon the ear’s frame of reference. The reference being explored is the self.
