Approaching Capital No.7 © Colin Duncan 2000
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

Approaching Capital No.9 © Colin Duncan 2000
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

The earth has two atmospheres, one about half the size of the other. They are not layered one atop the other but follow one another around the earth; diaphanous where they meet and overlap, with each supporting its own life forms. The smaller inhabits the night. It supports one life called dreams, and is known as sleep. The other, larger one is called consciousness. Artists during this century have colonised sleep and made way for others to join. Andre Breton called for sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers, to train their intellects upon the world of dreams. He never imagined what it might mean for a philosopher never to sleep... The earth has already undergone atmospheric change. A continual daytime has come forth by linking the schedules of financial markets, by excavating the underground to light the night sky and warm the oceans, by positioning satellites for the dispersion of suppressed dreams. In other words, insomnia has been globalised in the tirelessness of capitalism. Hell is not merely the consciousness that sleepless capitalism requires but the day-today grinding destruction bereft of a night. Thus, the problem is reversed. An individual's insomnia may be insufferable but at least it admits a cognisance of the concomitant sleeplessness. For Duncan sleep is a delusion because the renewed life it brings to another day masks the ongoing process of degradation. For the empath, sleep is the thief of vigilance. Sleeplessness awakens us to signs of life and its passing.

© Douglas Kahn 1998 / all this and heaven too

Footfall Hiroshima © Colin Duncan 2003
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

Untitled (passage) © Colin Duncan 2000
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

The out-of-focus, blurred image has long provided a visual transport from one realm to another.

© Stuart Koop, interiors, catalogue, 1997, Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Early Twenty First Century Self Portrait
© Colin Duncan 2002
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

Early Twenty First Century Landscape, Duggan Reserve
© Colin Duncan 2001
800x1200 mm Digitally Enhanced Photograph

These works (above) are titled Early Twenty First Century: Portrait/Landscape etc. and then the subject's name. I collect organic matter from the subject and have its DNA imaged. Its is then digitally manipulated and printed as a photo. The body of the subject becomes the object rather than its form.

Atmosphere 1 © Colin Duncan: 2001
800 x 1200mm.Digital Enhanced Photograph

Atmosphere 3 © Colin Duncan 2002
800 x 1200mm Digital Enhanced Photograph.

Engine Negative © Colin Duncan 2002
800 x 1200mm Digital Enhanced Photograph .