Through the medium of photography John Batho creates ghostly images, echoes of human figures through his series 'presence and absence'. The figures 100% demonstrate a presence and absence, your eyes can decipher an image of a human form, yet it remains not fully completed, it us faded from our vision. It's frustrating that our eyes can't see the full image, we feel constrained, like our vision is wrong.
The faded figures look like fragments of memory of lost loved ones, which adds an emotional feeling of absence. This meaning is further reinforced by a quote from Batho himself;
"Curiously this work brings back my childhood marked by the absence of my father, a prisoner of war for four years. Before my father of photography, a large framed portrait and attached to the wall of the room, my mother made me welcome each evening, I found myself in front of a stranger. Upon his return my father appeared to me very different: he did not look like her portrait. In Vilnius, I photographed people as coming from memory to evoke absence, loss, faulty identity."
I have been inspired by the artists as a way of creating some work that reflects our need for glasses, the loss and deterioration of sight which consequently leads us to wear glasses.
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