Aoife O'Donnell | Micro Portraits
Statement
Art and science are moving towards each other, enabling both disciplines to discover common issues and methods.Once-clear divisions are no longer reliably separate, prompting this project to represent the potential for an increasing overlap of interests.While the outcome of studies in art and science often differs, the creative imaginative processes are similar.
Micro Portraits falls under what has been deemed the genre sci-art which seeks to locate connections between the arts and science through borrowed methods and collaborations. It is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the photographer and Fergus Ryan, professor of biology at the Dublin Instituteof Technology.The project is concerned with alternative imaging techniques used in laboratories and the element of non-human intervention in creating imagery. The photographer is using microscopes to record images of cells, tissue, DNA and various other effluvia from her family and herself.
Removed from their usual context of the laboratory, these new genetic portraits seek to interrupt the traditional notion of the family portrait in photography prompting the viewer to consider the transformations and changes occurring inside the body on a cellular level,and questions when the alternative portrait produced by scientific imaging moves from the generic to the personal. The photographer provides a privileged opportunity for the viewer to get up close and personal with elements of the body which may previously have eluded recognition.