United Kingdom

Sarah Carp

www.sarahcarp.com

Biography

Sarah Carp's work starts from a private and contemplative study of her immediate surroundings. A daily documentation that leaves room for doubt and for a multitude of possible openings. Through series combining portraits, landscapes and architectural elements, she tries to express the expectation and hesitation before a changing inner and outer world. The images are made instinctively, a mingling at the crossroads of reportage and staged scenes. She loves to tell stories and to offer spaces of freedom.

Sarah Carp was born in Switzerland in 1981. She graduated form the Vevey Shool of Photography in 2003. She is currently based in Wales. She was awarded the first prize at the Situation-2 exhibition and her work has been shortlisted in several competitions, exhibions and festivals.

Mutation, transformation, disappearance ... The territory of Cherpines, the last agricultural place of the town of Plan-Les-Ouates is doomed to disappear in favour of new constructions. Shadow, silhouette, shape ... A character dressed in black travels the landscape in a near-funeral rite, a sign of mourning to come. In metamorphose, this silhouette changes shape, moving through the narration, exploration. Made in 2018.

Glendarragh, the Glen of the Oaks.
It is there, 30 km south of Dublin, where I went searching for my roots. My late grandmother was Irish and had lived there for a few years. I owed her my passion for art, and it was quite naturally through photography that I immersed myself in her story.

The images, produced through several journeys, are about absence and memory. The intimate observation of my immediate surroundings offers a journey in a world fated to disappear. This movement back to the land explores the mutations of a life that transforms and renews itself in full simple slowness.

In this rural Ireland, life’s rhythm depends on the elements’ temper. The characters, who seem straight out of a tale, are natives or family members living in Glendarragh. The places are inhabited by strange objects. Interiors and landscapes all tell the memories of the place. The surrounding nature, savage and mystical, seems to hold life’s secrets.

The images are arranged so as to allow each spectator to invent her own story. My narration, just as our ever transforming memory, is continuously recomposed. A subjective puzzle of colours, sensations and emotions.

This photographic encounter is, above all a story of life, of sharing and of love.
In times of illness, to live becomes a constant quest.

I started photographing my brother Henri the day when I learned he was suffering from acute leukaemia. In the beginning, it was me who felt the need to photograph him. In the end, it was he who asked to be photographed.
My camera became my best friend. It served as a barrier between myself and the world. It watched me during my stem cell donation to my brother and it accompanied and joined us together during this whole life experience.

Under the sheets, the metamorphosis happens slowly. The blood flows through the intravenous line and enters his body. In the hope of a rebirth, a battle takes place in the darkness of his cocoon.

A butterfly appears. Henri followed his path, he left sooner than expected.

This photographic work was carried out in Switzerland between May 2008 and August 2009. Henri died at home on 5 August 2009 at the age of 23.