For more than two decades, Paul Knight has taken intimacy as his subject, considering its relationship to representation and the social designs that underpin its expression. This has led him, via an interest in science, to the potential role that intimacy plays in consciousness as an evolutionary line. Knight’s ongoing photographic project, Chamber Music, records the life he shares with his partner Peter. Since their meeting in 2009, the series has accumulated hundreds of glimpses into the domestic space of their relationship, with its images created through varying degrees of pre-meditation and chance; often the camera timer is set so that it simply captures what it sees. The photographs test the ability of this machine – the camera – and the prints it produces to capture and contain intimacy. The images hold human love, which Knight proposes might be our only positive legacy in a future in which machine intelligence carries on, bearing the mark of its creators, beyond humanity itself.

Published by Monash University of Art, UNSW Galleries and Perimeter Editions
184 pages
Softcover
295 x 220 mm