Sunil Gupta's 'We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference' highlights how everyone who does not fit into a heteronormative system is thought to have an "alternate sexuality", and to me, this thinking led to my camera.

The camera world intended for film sheets to sit sheltered within slides. These sheets get developed by the chemicals and put out pictures of the best standard supplied by scans and prints. Anything that transgresses this traditional image-making procedure and its qualities is seen as an 'alternative' process.

While creating this work, I experienced a dysphoria of orientation brought on by using a large format camera. Lines converged and focus blurred as the bellows moved to frame what the lens saw. In terms of their identity, the resulting pieces are wholly fluid. The darkroom paper I used doubled as an image-capturing surface while also becoming a print. Dents can be further seen on the pieces as they resist to being confined in a camera slide. This is then made visible as they are processed through the chemical development process.

'Camera and The Queer Image' accounts for this tension of being pressed into a box, comparing it to my own experience.

2023 - ongoing
115 x 950 mm prints
Paper Negatives made using Kentmere VC Select Darkroom Paper in Shen Hao 2 camera

With thanks to Yu Chen Lee, Niloufar Arzani, Maisie Smith, Reanna & Gurnoor Singh for their help.