Nikola O’Sullivan

WHITE

“What terrifies us in whiteness is the lack of points of reference, of differences, that feeling of being overwhelmed by something blindingly, inhumanly obvious.”
White is the ultimate teller of the truth. It is honesty itself. It will not conceal anything on your behalf. One can only be completely comfortable with white if one has no secrets, not even with oneself; if one has absolutely nothing to hide.
“If one has understood white’s splendor, one can come to terms with black’s gravity.”
In order to understand a subject thoroughly, all of the details have to be stripped away, until a single fact remains in its simplest form. This is still only one side of the scale. By acknowledging the opposite of this, and using some of these elements to build the subject up again, the actual truth will become visible.
My work is an exploration into the depths of white. By stripping away the elements of photography that I have become disillusioned with, one by one, the purity and innocence of the photograph have become clear to me again. The existence of white objects on white backgrounds is barely visible. It is their opposite: shadow, and their creator: light, which stops them from merging into one.
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