On umbras & penumbras: an interview with Oliver Leach

 

I recently caught up with photographer, fringe scholar, Oliver Leach. This short interview began as a brief conversation in a print lab and later continued via: email.  Speaking to Oliver one is rewarded with tidbits from his vast knowledge on such topics as: Giallo, Ero Guro, Occult Sciences, The Other and Obscure Horror Films. This interview provides the uninitated a brief glimpse into the worlds of  dark interpreter, Oliver Leach..

S - There is a complexity in your work that goes beyond " straight forward "photography, would you discuss the process involved in the development of your photographs?

O. L - My current process bears some conceptual similarity to a film from 1973 called 'The Aphyx' in which a scientist constructs a photographic apparatus to capture the spirit of death as it enters or exits a corpse. I build my images out of spaced layers of photographic positives and carve out a presence (or absence) from inside of them. Then the creation is projected and captured with a camera.

S - Are these images digital?

O. L - They have only been recorded and sized digitally. My central concern in making my work is that a sense of a captured uncanny moment is conveyed to the audience. I feel that a truly uncanny moment needs to be built on something concrete as contrast.

 
  

S - What informs & inspires your work?

O. L - Horror cinema and pre-digital paranormal, occult and psuedo-scientific photography on a surface level. High octane anxieties and alchemy at its center.

 

 

S - Your photographs seem to haunt the viewer and have a cinematic quality. They seemto lie outside discursive space. Is there a history or narrative within these images?

O. L - The world I am building in my work is set in a dreamed version of the backyards and suburbs of my hometown in Texas. A comfortable place, the place I go back to at night on the edge of sleep. It is in this non-space that I carve out an opening or a presence, something or someone that shouldn't exist and is impossible to perceive. A shimmering, crackling blind spot approaching from across a suburban lawn. 

 

S - What are your future plans? Where might we see your photographs up close?

O. L - I have some pieces from my most recent body of work up in this years SOMArts Day of the Dead show and I have work available to view at the SFMOMA Artist's Gallery. Currently working on a group show based on the story of Betty and Barney Hill, and trying to create a homunculus. 

for more of Oliver Leach : here

photos © Oliver Leach