BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Photos/artwork by anna f.

All this started on a lonely bench at Frustration Station.

There I was, sitting, with a crushing sense of defeat, of failure, and a nagging urge to engage in some kind of creative process again. My life had unravelled slowly but predictably so, over the past few years. 2020 was the last straw.

I used to dream up shows, and stage them at festivals, fringe theaters, and clubs.

Exit – Irreverent Sideshows.
Enter – Irrelevant Slideshows.

Working in 2D was not my thing but I was left with no better options. I started playing around with a series of photographs I had taken of two friends taking down an exhibition. I had documented their ‘performance’ — their gestures, interactions, and movements — against the white walls of the gallery.

I don’t usually print the photos I shoot but this time I did. All of them, and more than one copy of each. I propped them up against the wall at the edge of my chaotic desk.

Waiting? Maybe.

I wandered down a path without any sense (nor care) of where I was going. No purpose, no intention, no destination — a random walk in the dark. I let my pen run over the images, then added brush strokes to some, before reprinting them, then more of the same. Over and over.

After a couple of months, I was on a roll, reworking the same photographs again and again, experimenting with collage, color, different inks and paints, re-photographing, and re-printing, adding more ink and paint. I was like a child throwing toys around a sandbox and loving it.

In spring 2025, almost a year after I had shot the original photographs, I stopped for a moment and looked. I said ‘Hi’ to my new friends. I was ready to dance, to transform the photographs more purposefully, and bend them gently along a curve of intention.

I’m not planning to leave this dance floor any time soon. I might even change the music, learn some new moves.

. . .