Edward Nurton Takes Us on a Journey Through the Human Experience Between Clarity and Abstraction

In "I Once Saw a Cloud Dissolving", Edward Nurton guides his reader along a pathway into the depths of the human mind.

Sometimes it’s a linear story that informs the author in the making of a series, other times it’s a set of feelings that takes over and guides the photographer in a visual stream of consciousness. This does not mean losing control over one's project; instead, the visual strategy and editing process become even more crucial in enhancing such a parallel world, inviting the viewer to join in.

In his work, Edward Nurton guides his reader along a pathway into the depths of the human mind, using carefully coordinated imagery to convey different layers of consciousness.

The resulting dream-like journey is one that gradually shifts in and out of focus, pausing for moments of clarity as recognizable subjects come into view — a headless, battle-scarred statue; timid petals of a flower in bloom; the contours of a pierced ear — before dissolving once again into obscurity and abstraction.

The procession of shadowy, black-and-white photographs can be vertiginous and disorienting. But hovering beneath the surface, subtle connections — geometric, tonal, compositional — link the images together like pieces of a puzzle with an infinite number of solutions.

A thread ultimately emerges from Nurton’s delicate interplay of visual elements and subjects, provoking questions on perception, permanence, and the fine line between the tangible and intangible aspects of the human experience.

Words and pictures by Edward Nurton

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Edward Nurton is an author who works with the photographic medium. His work is an exploratory journey of the self that revolves around the motifs of nostalgic longing for the past and anticipation of the unknown future. Nurton’s photography is both real and unreal: reflected in mundane objects and experiences, it evokes the eternal and existential. He is one of the participants of FOLIO 2021, PhMuseum's International Online Photobook Masterclass. Follow him on Instagram and PhMuseum. 

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PhMuseum curators.