From the series, Borderline.

Kerry Mansfield

“When I first encountered what I now call, a Borderline image, I wasn’t sure if the resulting negative would tell the same story as my eyes. My camera responded with a defiant “Yes!” when contact sheets revealed an entirely new world. So I began my quest to hunt down as many of these strange instances as I could find. I have been working on the series ever since then by using the windows of my chosen home as a refractory device to merge the interior and exterior space onto one like plane.  The process involves shooting and printing only one negative. There are no double exposures or digital manipulation of any kind. I have found the “analog” quality of this project to be essential to its creation. I never set-up or adjust the circumstances that produce the images, I simply hunt them down and capture them. Throughout this exploration I have found an often harmonious union between man and nature. Mirrored, reflected and superimposed, the elements became interchangeable. The sky became ceilings. Trees became walls. Ground became floor. Air became windows. In the resulting photographs, the windows themselves vanish entirely while the outside pours inside and vice versa. Once a structure is built, we then believe ourselves separate or “safe” from the so-called chaotic influences of the natural world. What I have found is that, in many respects, what we really believe is an illusion of separateness. And we’ve chosen this as our reality.

There is a place in between the hard lines of walls, ceilings and furniture and the botanical design that envelops the outside world where a seamless merge occurs and creates a third reality. One can no longer distinguish whether the wall in the image is concrete or if it merely floats through as apparition of itself in reflection. It is in this place, on the Borderline of real versus reflection that we can ask if one if more “real” than the other. And if so, can you tell which one it is? I have discovered that it may not matter at all and the most important element is how the spaces work together. The Borderline images encourage the viewer to look differently at their own domestic world and find a new way of examining their environment where “man and nature” can come together in a bizarre coexistence of concordance.”