Melding photograph and sculpture, Darren Harvey-Regan (b.1974, England) works in the liminal space where flat representation ends, and three-dimensional object begins. And with the photographic medium straddling object and representation simultaneously, such a place seems an astute location for Harvey-Regan to examine where the two meet. Perplexing, and at times humorous, his photographs act as the subject of his scrutiny but importantly also as the tool that he uses to carry out his procedure, constantly attempting to free himself from the constraints of photographic representation.

Darren Harvey-Regan is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. His work has appeared in exhibitions and publications internationally and is part of the permanent photography collection at the V & A Museum, London.

The Erratics

Harvey-Regan’s put together a collection of his images, displaying them all in a photobook named ‘The Erratics’.

Photobook: The Erratics

In geology an erratic is a rock that differs in type from those around it, having been carried over large distances by long-vanished glaciers. Harvey-Regan’s eponymous series questions the medium of photography and its ability to extract from contexts and alter perception.

Originating in the artist’s desire to liberate himself from the weight of representational imagery – a yearning for abstraction – alongside a converse desire to engage with appearances as only photography can, The Erratics began as a series of large format photographs in the Egyptian desert, capturing chalk monoliths in the most objective manner possible. These images were followed by months of meticulously carving and photographing chalk rocks in the studio, forcing a geometry and line to shape the objects towards the photographic surfaces they eventually become. 

The Erratics combines these sets of images within a new text work by Harvey-Regan that explores how the processes and concerns within the work might be further expressed and shaped through the act of writing.