Kate Glasson
Love Past
Society semi finalist
Behind the camera
Architectural graduate Kate Glasson moved from the South Island to the capital eight years ago. She quickly became settled here with “a beautiful and elastic whānau of creative people practising across disciplines,” and these friends help to inspire her work.
Why photography?
Before architecture Kate briefly studied art history. She was struck by a photograph from 1839 – Self Portrait as a Drowned Man by Hippolyte Bayard – for “its humour and its play on the notion of ghosts,” which sparked an interest in the art form. Memory and nostalgia became key elements in her work, using photography, particularly film photography, to tell a story. She says “the idea that it is a storing of the light of that moment, that the same light that touched the subject also touched your film – simply to create the image – is inherently romantic to me.”
The snap
Love Past shows just that – it is a portrait of Tom, “a past love” of the photographer. It’s taken at the “iconic Trash Palace in Porirua shortly before things between us ended,” she explains. “There’s something in there, in the image, around the paraphernalia of our lives and the memories we carry with us.” She sees the image as “a portal into that time, and a meditation on the nature of loss, value, and love.”
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