Adze to Coda: an archaeology of device - a series of combination photogram photographs
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The project uses photographic images to explore the concept of object, land and archaeology where the intricate patterns of both photograph and photogram sit against a stark black background.
In Adze to Coda, Lloyd Godman uses the photogram technique to explore concepts of the intersection of nature and culture. The works are photographically complex and challenging to create. Combining both photographs and photograms on the same sheet of photographic paper they demand high dark room skill and patience. Four separate exposures are needed to create each unique image, and each require a great deal of experimentation, failure but ultimately success. The culmination of the project presents a huge composite photogram of a waka (canoe). A large waka (Canoe) sculpture created by sculptor Jeff Thompson at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators, (NZAAE) conference Auckland 2003, was used as an object for the [photogram. The large waka was laid on over 50 sheets of photo paper and participants of a photogram workshop helped process the sheets of paper.
..paradox is explored further in Adze to Coda: an archaeology of device ( 1993 2004). Photographic images from the “estate of Wilderness” - native bush at Piha, on the Auckland west coast, rock formations at port Pegasus on Stewart Island in the far south - are accompanied by shaped photograms. The shapes are of simple tools - Maori fishhooks, adze heads, patu, Pakeha hammers, saws, spanners, while contained within them are photograms of layers of old gears, broken blades, corroded screws - tools of the past, returning to nature through rust and rot, ‘an archaeology of implements that reference their own history’. The series ends with 1’s and 0’s instead of tools, for with the ‘soft tools’ of the computer age we are left with binary codes rather than physical remains, and the tactility of the object is denied. Lawrence Jones
About the author
Lloyd Godman established and was head of the photography section at the Dunedin School of Art for 20 years. His experimental photographic journey first included the extensive use of the photogram technique with his Codes of Survival project based on the Auckland Island in the Southern Ocean. To express his ideas, he developed a means of combining both photograms and photographs.
He has had over 40 solo exhibitions and more than 200 group exhibitions. His current work uses living plants as a medium and he is at the fore front of integrating plants into architecture in a fully sustainable manner.
