Melanie Stidolph

The offer of an online exhibition with Fotonet presented an opportunity to broaden my normally singular approach to showing work. Selected with Susie Medley, Director of Fotonet, it presents a wider selection of images, including previously unseen photographs, from an ongoing body of work.

My photographs are of scenes that lie somewhere between reality and the imagination. In producing my work I am looking for images that have the potential to reveal a moment of heightened awareness and perception, and am interested in drawing a connection between internal, personal experience and the external environment. The information the photographs contain about their subject matter is secondary to the work's ability to communicate an intensely experienced moment.

I choose locations or environments where I can be absorbed in the process of taking a photograph. Often the successful works are taken when I'm on my own, or when I'm less conscious of the effect of my own presence on my immediate environment, I choose locations not only for the specifics of each site; for example wild landscapes and colonies of animals, but also for the practical freedoms such locations provide. Walking on my own through the landscape allows me to be aware of the immediate environment, whilst at the same time to be engaged in my own thoughts.

I approach making the work without preconceived ideas of a specific outcome, but trust myself to find and react to something remarkable in these environments. The act of taking a photograph is triggered by a connection with the scene in front of me, an instantaneous feeling, which I try not to influence by overly thinking about or trying to pre-determine the end result in advance. The final images are as much about a depiction of what was in front of me, as they are an attempt to communicate how it felt to look at that scene, what particular significance it might have had for me, and what the final photograph could mean for the viewer.

'Stidolph distills an unexpected drama from low-key subjects into still images which range from landscape to portrait compositions. Working spontaneously in a documentary fashion, but with a medium format camera, Stidolph's people, animals and places become quietly transformed into luminous, highly loaded moments.'
Alistair Robinson, Director, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, 2005.

'Stidolph's picture of a white horse and its foal has astrange intensity (due in part to its ethereal, washed out color-scheme) that refuses to be immediately characterized as "doing" this or that. The sincere beauty of the photo counterbalances the My Little Pony irony of the subject matter.'
Michael Paulson, 'This show is ribbed for her pleasure', NYArts, 2005.