Scott Duncan

So much is barely discernible. The streets may be cloaked in fog. The snow covers the dark ground. Waves in a lake break a mirror-like surface. The sun's glare dissolves solid shapes and brings life to inanimate objects. The real meanings of words often arrive well after they've been spoken. Something solid may dissolve quite suddenly.

Earlier in my career, my practice was rooted in performance poetry, long-form video, and installations reflecting on the marks left by modern infrastructure—ports, highways, and distribution centres. Through this work, I was documenting the scarring humans made on the landscape. In 2014, I brought that practice to an abrupt close.

I began taking photographs in earnest in 2016, at a time when everything around me seemed to vanish into fog. As the familiar world blurred and disappeared from view, and as my own sense of presence began to fade, an impulse arose to reach toward the light through the lens, and to begin a return. It marked a shift in my work—from observing the scars left by human intervention to seeking the subtle, transformative impact of light on places, structures, and lives. To support this exploration, I often work with old manual lenses, wide-open apertures, and back-lighting, using these techniques to invite light itself to become an active, shaping force within the image. My work draws inspiration from cinema, especially in how positioning in relation to the subject enables light to transform it—softening edges, dissolving solidity, and revealing something more fleeting and unstable.

Moments like these—when the hidden becomes visible, or the visible begins to dissolve—feel decisive to me. Through photography, I try to tell the story of things on the verge of appearing or disappearing, moments that are barely perceptible but deeply felt.