AMERICAN-BORN photographer Kelly Morris is celebrating a decade of capturing unique photographic images of life in Northern Ireland, with her new exhibition Serendipity.
The exhibition opens at Molly’s Yard, Botanic Avenue, Belfast, Sunday 7 November, 5-9pm (entry free) and runs until Thursday18th, when it begins a week-long run at St Malachy’s Old Boys, Antrim Road, Belfast (entry free).
Celebration is an apt term for Morris’s photography. In a world flooded with digital and manipulated images, the axis of Morris’s work is the fleeting, meaningful moment between subject and witness. Focusing mainly on people, and frequently on relationships, Morris has an uncanny eye for emotional dynamics. They are captured instants of unself-conscious communication which are, by turns funny, engaging and, often, moving – without ever veering into the sentimental or voyeuristic.
‘I think a lot of photographers use their cameras as a barrier between themselves and their subjects,’ explains Morris, who has lived in Northern Ireland for 13 years. ‘But I think of the shutter as a blink of my eye. There’s a relationship between me and the moment I am photographing.’
Morris works primarily in black and white, which, she says, offers a more immediate and nuanced effect, without the distraction and clutter of colour. She also prefers to use film, which she regards as more tactile than digital. The results are an oddly timeless salute to the larger human truths evident in smaller human moments.
This makes for a collection which is a positive and emotionally satisfying experience, reflecting a point of view steeped in empathy and the spontaneous.
Serendipity promises to be a retrospective with its lens firmly set on the future.