"Torn Apart (Dangling Shell)" by Annie Claflin
Torn Apart (Dangling Shell), 2024
Undertow Series
Annie Claflin
Media: Boiled Archival Pigment Print with Salt Acrylic Paint, and Sand on Cradled Wood Panel
Size: 10" x 7" x ¾"
Price: $650
Artist Statement:
Undertow is a lens-based series that investigates an ecotone—a transition area where the land meets the sea—and foreshadows its demise. I created dark, underexposed images with a spotlight on seaweed, debris and other seaside sites to mimic crime scene photographs. I then boil these prints in salt water and mount or embed them in salt and sand on black and white cradled wood panels. These items exist in an imagined hereafter, billions of years from now, when our current rising seas finally recede. As the last tides ebb, treasures in the form of weathered and aged photographs will signal to an invented scavenger that these items depict a place someone once held dear. I am intrigued by the battle between factual and fictitious topographies and photography’s role in identifying them.
I, too, am an ecotone and question the role that my history plays in the coastal spaces I call home. I once dwelled on the eroding edge of the Atlantic coast but left in search of more fortified shores on the Pacific. Here, on the beach in San Diego, I discover that this sand is also slowly yielding to the rising flow of water. I run towards the fear of this inevitable loss.
Photo Process:
Digital capture of a seaside scene printed as an archival pigment print, boiled in salt water, and covered with acrylic gel medium then peeled apart. The paper base with the ghost image is mounted on one cradled wood panel covered with black acrylic paint and sand, while the image suspended in gel medium is mounted on a second cradled wood panel painted covered in white acrylic paint and salt. The two panels are joined together in the back and the two pieces hang as one.
