From top to bottom, “Colourblind”, “Lola Montez IV”, and “Betwixt the Saddle and the Ground”

Photographer Josh Thornton tells us about his multi-layered, ghostly-real, multiple exposures:

The process involved in these works is designed to try and record an impression of my daily perception.  I shoot using a Smena camera (a vintage Russian camera which has a fully manual wind and shutter release mechanism) which allows me to shoot at very short intervals across the film by winding the crank a fraction of an inch each time, which layers to create the density evident in most of these shots.  A single 36 exposure film is exposed closer to 500 times, all from eye level, in an attempt to mimic the process of recording memories.  I started doing this over journeys I would regularly take, like the walk from my house to the train station before and after work, and then expanded this to pretty much every journey I make on public transport.  It’s a lengthy process to expose a film this heavily, typically taking a week of repeated journeys, firing shots off a few seconds apart, but I really enjoy the results.

Stay tuned for more from Josh Thornton over the coming weeks.