Deflowered

My work has often been concerned with signs, symbols, and the ways images acquire meaning through association. For this series I began experimenting with a lighting process I refer to as “light tainting.”

Rather than illuminating a subject with a conventional light source, the photographs are produced in complete darkness using only the light emitted from a phone screen. On that screen, however, pornographic videos are playing. The changing colours from the footage become the only illumination used to photograph carefully arranged floral compositions.

At first glance the images appear decorative—bright blossoms saturated with vivid colour. Yet the source of that colour remains hidden from view. The beauty of the flowers is technically produced by imagery that is never directly visible within the frame.

The work emerged as a response to the increasing normalisation and accessibility of online pornography, and the way repeated exposure can gradually reshape perception and intimacy. Flowers, traditionally associated with innocence, romance, and courtship, become illuminated by imagery that carries very different connotations.

Because the scenes on the phone screen determine the colours cast across the flowers, the compositions required careful selection of footage whose tones would complement the arrangements. The images therefore exist in a strange visual balance—initially seductive, yet slightly unsettling once the mechanism behind their creation becomes apparent.