There are three versions of The Conversation – all based around me talking to the camera in the studio – trying to get a conversation started and being met with short bright flashes or malfunction. The voiceover uses phrasing that you might use to a lover in a frustrated conversation or to shout to the camera as the automatic sensor misses a shot ‘Are you getting this?’. The repetitive phrases refer both to the technical failures of the camera – how often it misses capturing ‘the moment’ – and a lapse in human communication.

The first version of the video was unscripted, talking at the camera, my voice when it was raised setting of the automatic trigger, sometimes. In post-production the video switched between the studio and the darkroom, a conversation with cameras and enlargers, mis-firing or illuminating the wrong scene. Later versions took the same script and synched the movement and image change in the video with the exasperations and frustrations in the voiceover.

The Conversation, I was made in response to the invitation to contribute to ‘PIGDOGMANIFESTO’, an exhibition project curated by Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson. First shown at Air Space Gallery, Stoke on Trent, then Phoenix Gallery, Exeter.