Cycle; a recurrent period of a definite number of years adopted for purposes of chronology; a recurrent round or course (of successive events, phenomena etc.) a regular order or succession in which things recur; a round or series which returns on itself. Oxford English Dictionary.

The power of photography relies upon its ability to record with intensely faithful detail the surface appearance of things. We believe, in our credulity, that photographs are in some way “real” - more real than other artforms such as painting. It is accepted that paintings can be concerned with symbolism and metaphor but the old saying “The camera never lies” is still widely used and mis-used. To make photographs that are concerned with something other than that which is actually depicted so faithfully in them seems to undermine the medium and to invite the viewer to collude with you in a very believable lie.

A Five Year Cycle was the result of a long period of investigative experimentation into the possibilities and implications of sequential construction with photographs. As it developed over time it became increasingly autobiographical in nature, the motivation for the work becoming a process of self discovery. Most of the pictures were made alongside my routine everyday life, some revisiting places frequented in childhood. Attempts were made to find connections between seemingly unconnected, disparate visual experiences separated by time and place. Forms, motifs and symbols occur and re-occur creating visual rhymes which underpin and unite the sequence like the rhymes in a poem. In sequencing, I am not only attempting to affect each individual image by association with another but also to load the “empty” spaces in between with other potential meaning.

Not an attempt to make straightforward photographic documents of any specific place, the pictures operate within a metaphorical tradition taking the form of mirrors rather than windows on the world.

Adrian Pinckard