This year's PhotoFrome festival has raised the question I've been asking myself extensively over the years.

Where is THE truth in photography?

Was this image staged? What does 'staged' mean anyway? When people are aware of being photographed, it is always a stage, right? Is this a real emotion? Maybe the image was generated by the AI? What is the meaning, if any, beyond that which it depicts?

As an artist, sometimes you want to dissolve any questions and bring something to the surface, which will trigger an emotion in the audience. Which and whose emotion will it be? The one the artist was feeling or the one that arises in the observer as a response to the symbols in the image?

Perhaps, as it would appear to be most logical, it is an emotion of the person in the image?

I became interested in expired film photography and layering techniques a few years back because the inevitable abstraction obliterates the symbols, leaving only the colour. To see the truth is ultimately the goal of my whole practice, to see and to communicate.

I have answered the question above through the use of this medium: the truth is always centred inside the photographer's mind, and is resonant with their inner emotional processing. Their eyes spot it and click at the moment when the truth is 'true' to them, and this does come through to the observer. No matter the circumstances and conditions, we usually know how to tell the difference between truth and the lack of it, whatever it was that was photographed.