“The Spells” draws connections between superstition and science, folk magic and physics by building a visual periodic table. Its elements are substances with symbolic magical properties like salt, iron, milk and ink. Or they are devices and apparatus that bridge our world and the other, unseen world. As we learn more about the world of quantum particles that underpin our reality, the stranger it gets. In this light do the photo-sciences of alchemy and magic seem so distant?
This series was shot on an experimental and unstable batch of Polaroid film. Over time the chemical make up of these photographs crystalised, creating a fugitive image, defying attempts to create a fixed, definitive work. Eventually the originals will completely disappear, and only these digital scans will remain - so this series also embodies the idea of permanence, time and the question about whether the authentic building blocks of a work are atoms or bytes.