Paul Rideout - MA Photography
My practice explores the intersection of photography, memory, and perception, often working within the tension between clarity and obscurity. I am drawn to the overlooked, the liminal, and the transient—using repetition, restriction, and experimental approaches to uncover new ways of seeing the familiar.
Working with both analogue and digital processes, I move fluidly between traditional photographic methods and expanded forms such as bookmaking, sound, installation, and collaboration. These shifts allow me to test how images operate across different contexts, whether as intimate hand-bound objects or large-scale immersive environments.
Recent projects have engaged with themes of impermanence, place, and the dystopian undercurrents of everyday life. By walking and re-walking particular routes, or by staging encounters with blurred and obscured portraiture, I explore photography as a performative research process—where meaning is generated through practice rather than imposed upon it.
Collaboration is central to my approach: working with artists of various disciplines, including writers, painters, and other photographers, allows my projects to move beyond photography into multi-sensory dialogues. This interdisciplinarity reflects my belief that no medium exists in isolation, and that art can be a site where different languages—visual, textual, sonic—intersect to produce layered experiences.
Ultimately, my work is about slowing down perception, creating spaces where viewers can dwell in uncertainty, resonance, and quiet unease.
