Joyce Campbell
Marianas

The Mariana Trench is the deepest place in the world’s oceans, the lowest elevation of the surface of the Earth’s crust. It is the unfathomable, unknowable deep, which marks the limit to where life can exist.

Black space takes us back to primordial stillness, to absence, and to nothingness. In Joyce Campbell’s Marianas series (2003), fragile organisms emerge from the groundlessness of black space as if exhibiting the first signs of life. Each exposure mimics the slow and difficult transition into existence.

I was interested in morphogenesis, complex form emerging out of simple material conditions.  I conducted a simple set of experiments using colloidal silver in suspension in order to produce bio-morphic images floating in a black space. The results imitate living forms and point to the miraculous rarity of life.

Joyce Campbell