Cloud Studies, 2022–23

From the early nineteenth century onwards the desire to record clouds accurately—whether in the name of art or science or faith—promoted rapid advances in representational technologies more broadly. Eternal and fleeting, today the sky remains a realm of wonder and confusion; it is an emblem of freedom, a site of conflict, and a source of dread. Often directly translating earlier images of clouds—from Constable through Muybridge and Stieglitz to the Manhatten Project—the works documented here seek to contain some of these contradictions, while also rejoicing in their escape.

Although fixed in materially stable sheets of aluminium, the images dissolve into new forms as the light in which they are viewed changes, evolving with every flicker of cloud between sun and earth; the historical cloudscapes are animated by those of today, as the weather of once upon a time is conflated with that of now. That the past and the present fail to fit points, perhaps, to a broader instability and a more troubling sense of change.