A thumping in the distance

"For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away [...] the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go." - Rebecca Solnit, The Blue of Distance. A Field Guide for Getting Lost. A thumping in the distance captures the blue black of the ocean at midnight, but only in myth; it was shot in broad daylight. Defying the practical limitations of photographing the ocean at night (weather, light and above all, safety), O’Connor captures an impossible Prussian blue ‘at the far edge of what can be seen’. O’Connor’s images often work in the realm of the imagined site; simulating an impossible realism through the lens. A thumping in the distance extends these aims to a phenomenological level – offering an alternate timeline for images that speak to the slippery mutability of photography’s supposed candidness, opting to plunge the viewer into a pool of iridescent pigments. Its impact is that of a dreamlike, half-lit memory – ‘the colour of where you can never go’.