Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s eerily lit nightscapes bring to life those moments when things that have been secret and hidden suddenly come to light; when the subconscious comes to the surface. The distant houses concealed behind trees, and lit from within, is an image that also suggests the mysteries of Belgian painters, such as the Symbolist William Degouve de Nuncques, and the Surrealist René Magritte, a pioneer in the juxtaposition of words and images that evoke a psychological response in the viewer. Since the exhibition of The Story Series is in the Roberto Polo gallery in Brussels, this connection to Belgian Symbolism and Surrealism continues a tradition sourced in poetic enigma. Although that connection may be coincidental, it is appropriate.

Although Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s photographs evoke the projected images of film, they also possess a tactile painterly presence. Because she photographs in ambient light, her prints, on Hahnemühle fine art rag paper, often appear grainy. She favours that lush effect. Her photographs are subtly colourful. The lights and darks in Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s photographs are composed of secondary and tertiary colours, never primary. But the connection to painting runs even deeper. These are landscapes. And in them we see how the artist uses and subverts the conventions of that genre. Nevertheless, whatever space the photographs capture is often complicated in strange ways, making our visual and imaginary entry into certain scenes less easy than we might think, like a half-extended invitation.

It is difficult, even for the most hardened soul, to not lose itself in imagining, or remembering, or hoping, in front of Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s images—of reliving past trauma, past love, past heartache, past possibilities. That these projections of ours are always in the past tense is produced, perhaps, by the time encoded in the medium itself—photography records the what-has-been—and in the non-specific past-ness of the architecture, the narrow lanes, and the particular moodiness of the scenes.

Parts of the foregoing text are extracted and edited from the essays Carolyn Marks Blackwood I The Story Series by Barbara Rose, and Photography and Storytelling: ‘The Story Series’ of Carolyn Marks Blackwood by Aruna D’Souza.