Simulacra and Suburb
These photographs are from an ongoing series called “Simulacra and Suburbs.” They are an attempt to recapture and reshape fragments of memory from the geography of my youth upon returning after years abroad. Each image is a shard of remembrance, vague yet recognizable. As I move through the urban landscapes of my childhood, I am constantly confronted with ephemeral signs, flashes of indefinite memory both nostalgic and melancholic. These photographic fragments, or flashes of memory, physically imagine a phantasmagoric temporal transformation. They explore the constant transmutation of urban space; layers of decay and regeneration projected on top of each other. Photography, as a mode of seeing, lays bare the unique, desolate beauty of these concrete hinterlands. This beauty itself is derived from transformation, from the aesthetic resonance of decay and the urban form reduced into an interrelation of light, shape and color. But the images also strive to convey a personal transformation, a process of flowing between recognition and memory, a subject that is both localized and universal. For most of my personal photographic work, I shot almost exclusively in black and white. But I after weeks of shooting around Southern California, I found my normal compositional techniques produced underwhelming images. Searching for an effective way to translate my experience of this personal transitional period through photography, I began to experiment with color images shot in .JPG and with minimum processing. I found the color palette captured the washed out hues and harsh light indicative to Southern California and more accurately reflected my visual sensations moving through these spaces. Shifting my photograph style, this collection conveys a literal transformation in my means of perceiving the world through a lens. In this project, I am attempting to reclaim the landscape that I once knew so deeply and yet now feel so disconnected from, to find ways to experience beauty in the desolate, mundane liminality. The photographs chronicle the progression between foreignness and intimacy, distance and immediacy, past and future, and strive to open up space for the spectator to follow their own journey.
My name is Ryan Lafferty, I am 30 years old and currently based in Riverside, CA. After finishing university in Chicago, including time studying abroad in Paris, I moved on to a doctoral program in London focusing on art history and critical theory. Towards the end of 2019, I made the difficult decision to suspend my studies and move back to Southern California after over a decade to assist my parents with family issues. The onset of Covid-19 extended my hiatus indefinitely.
My academic work examined how artistic creation is influenced by our geography, and thus how art is a direct expression of a unique experience of space. While in London, I became deeply connected to the notion of psychogeography, and regularly undertook long distance walks across the UK. Upon returning to California, I have tried to extend that sense of geographic exploration to the landscape of my childhood, surroundings that are simultaneously foreign and familiar to me. Through the photographic image, I am re-imagining geographies on the periphery of my childhood memories.