What do you see when you look at a crumpled ball of paper? A human heart? A discarded idea? Photographer Thomas Brown sees both, and more, and it's precisely this ambiguity that his newest project, Volume of Light, is founded on. Brown made 469 different photographs of paper balls, those ephemeral everyday sculptures, and he is inviting his viewer to identify the meaning within them in a nifty test of perception worthy only of the psychoanalyst's chair.
Alongside the Rorschach Test element at play in Volume of Light, there is also a collaborative one; Brown encourages his viewer to adopt an image by volunteering a title for it, thereby testing the boundaries of authorship which usually define an artwork. "The terminology is a little unusual, but it best fits the process," Brown explains. "Think buying a patch of the moon, or naming a star for a friend…Whenever the image is shown, in a gallery, on the web, in print, your title will always be part of it."
It's a magnificent celebration of the subjectivity at work in photography. "Once the project is completed, and all the images have their new given titles, we will have two images sat side by side that are essentially the same thing: one could be called Sunrise Over St Pauls and the other Old Witch Face." What's more, the project provides a rare opportunity to not only to purchase your own piece of art – the adopter will receive an A4 print of their selected image – but also the chance to be part of the project forever.
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For more information see Volume of Light.
