Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

href="https://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AlexandraLethbridge04.jpg"> My work in the broadest sense explores ideas of reality vs fiction. I’m interested in how our perceptions react to those notions and the role our imaginations play in navigating between the two. My most recent body of work, The Meteorite Hunter, was a way for me to explore perception by presenting a collection of artefacts and concealing the source of their origin. The images that make up the project consist of found images sourced from places such as EBay, as well as images sourced from NASA’s online archive. During my research into NASA, I came across a scientific phenomenon called The Overview Effect. I wanted to share the resulting essay I wrote as part of that research. The Overview Effect is the scientific phenomenon experienced when astronauts are faced with the sight of Earth from Space. In the act of looking back at the orbiting Earth they experience an overwhelming sense of the Earth as a collective being, a feeling that stays with them once they have returned home. The notion became so commonly reported amongst returning astronauts that an institute was formed dedicated to its study. The fascination with this phenomenon is the value of looking at something so familiar with a renewed sense of importance and perspective. In the space expeditions astronauts undergo, the focus is always on discovering the new, unfound and alien but many report the sensation of looking back upon what we experience every day, as the most eye opening of all discoveries. So often the familiar is overlooked in favour of the exotic as we crave to see and experience things that are strange and different to us. Sometimes the perception of something extraordinary or unusual lies within our control and the search for the otherworldly becomes an obsession where the reward is always out of reach. The epitome of that is The Meteorite Hunter. This hunter is someone who commits to the art of finding space rocks in a focused pursuit more akin to a necessity than a desire. Their job entails searching for a glimpse of a translunary guest, a clue to something that tells us more about who we are and where we come from. The Meteorite itself becomes the reward, driving hunters through our landscapes to find clues of its whereabouts. The Meteorite, in her modest way, hides within our surroundings in layers of sand and dirt, her exotic homeland concealed in her camouflage. As the hunter travels, so too does the Meteorite; its flight can be broken down into segments. In orbiting through space the rock exists as a Meteoroid. Once in the Earth’s gravitational pull it becomes a Meteor and if it manages to impact with Earth and survive it becomes a Meteorite. The journey becomes a signifier. Space; pointing to the ethereal and celestial and Earth; to the concrete and factual. The act of the extraterrestrial Meteor landing on Earth creates a realm where these two things interact in a way that is most unusual and unexpected. The Meteorite Hunter himself becomes the guide between these two realms, anticipating and calculating the arrival of any of these specimens. The job of a Meteorite Hunter is one of patience, understanding and skill. The constant, relentless searching expresses a need to understand more than we know and more than we have. The hunt sees them sift and wade through our earthly rubble, constantly casting aside the fantastic objects that exist all around us in favour of the celestial and otherworldly. Soon the artefacts that are collected along the way begin to cluster and multiply until there exists a vast archive of forms acting as evidence. When we view the archive as a collection, as an overview of the hunt undertaken by the Meteorite Hunter, we lose the separations between what is ‘mundane’ and ‘sublime’. In questioning the origin of any of these objects we un-know what is familiar and therefore overlooked. When we consider the relationship between space and earth and engage with the process of The Meteorite Hunter, we are given the opportunity to connect these two realms and it is this resulting synergy that breaks down the separation between this world and the universe. In this space we are invited to consider the two as being connected and as one. In considering how viewing the whole can teach us more than the sum of the parts, the value of the Overview Effect becomes apparent. Being able to consider and appreciate our surroundings with renewed appreciation frees us from the search and welcomes us to contemplate the place we find ourselves in here and now.