KATE ROY AFFINITY
I AM REALLY only at the beginning of discovering who I am. After years of trauma, mental and physical abuse, and hiding within myself, I have now come to a point in my life that it is necessary to face the truths of my experiences and finally heal. I’m excited to face this world. I am at a beautiful point of strength and voice and can feel myself shifting spiritually, emotionally, and physically for the better. I look at art and research as one and the same, and I see my creative practice as the same as a field scientist: exploring and investigating, aiming to understand what it is I am observing.
Affinity is a project that was originally developed to help slow down my photography process and connect with my subjects, and possibly myself, on a deeper level. Using an 8x10 view camera, I spent an hour or more speaking to my subjects and delving into some of the most difficult moments in their personal lives. When I felt they had truly opened up, I would snap the shutter with the aim of capturing a part of what I believed to be who they really are.
Shooting with paper negatives gave me the opportunity to bring my subjects into the darkroom with me after taking their portraits to experience the process of my practice. It was exciting to experience the magic of the chemistry, as it would reveal an image, whilst developing a bond between subject and artist.
Kate Roy is an emerging Ottawa-based visual artist who primarily works with historical film processes and experiments with cyanotypes, chemistry, various film formats, painting, sculpture, and woodwork.