Searching for Sebald

Victoria Lem's photographs trace memories of place, the remnants of past activities. For Ruinous Recollections, Vic is searching for Sebald, the German author who discovered echoes of his own traumatic past in Manchester and Salford's industrial shadows. The image above from Castlefield basin represents the initial experience of Vic's exploration of Sebald's spatial memories. Visit her blog for more insight into her thoughts on the project.

http://victorialem.blogspot.com/

Salford Drifting

In his novel The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald memorably draws upon his own experiences of Manchester to evoke a walk along the Manchester Ship Canal into Salford. The encounters with the built environment he details upon the way develop into an affective topography of the industrial vista. This episode will form the basis for Victoria Lem's works for Ruinous Recollections. Vic photographs post-industrial ruins, uncovering ghostly remnants of preserved memory, often adding extra layers of palimpsestuous reading to her artefacts by using a time-based pin hole camera techniques and by making spectral fragmented screen prints of the images she captures - the dramatic photograph above is from a series Vic took at Barnes Hospital. Re-tracing the footsteps of Sebald, Vic will add her own memories and fictions to the city.