Amy Friend's celestial interventions

Canadian photographer pierces vintage photos to let the light and lost souls shine through

Famously, some cultures believe that to take a photograph of a person is to take away part of their soul - that part of the soul embeds itself into the photograph. If any photographs were to actuallyu come close to representing this it would probably be Canadian photographer Amy Friend’s project Dare alla Luce.

By piercing holes in found photographs Friend, who has exhibited her work widely in Ontario, Canada, allows light to pass through the images, bringing the photographs and the people in them to life. “Through small deliberate interventions, I altered these vintage images,” Friend explains. “Allowing light to pass through them. (After all, photographs are made possible with light.)”

 

Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend
Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend

Many of Friend’s photo projects are focused around lost souls and or the idea of something missing. (Another project features photographs of clothing supposed to have washed up on the shores of Cuba, representing the stories of people who'd attempted to leave the island by boat. “That is where this series came from. These stories. The lost ones. Despite this bleak reality, the work is also about hope and dreams, and freedom. About chance, struggle, and loss.”

 

Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend
Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend

Friend, whose work has been featured in the Magenta Flash Forward Emerging Photography Competition, LENS magazine and who has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, says the project aims to return the photographs, and indeed the souls of the subjects to the atmosphere. “In a literal and somewhat playful manner,” she says. “I aimed to give the photographs back to the light, hence the title of the series, Dare alla Luce, an Italian phrase used to describe the moment of birth.”

   

Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend
Dare alla Luce - Amy Friend