Psychopomp — Sofia Kathryn Smith

Psychopomp (2018-2019) - 34 diptychs with text / 35mm

“A picture of a window is a picture of a world and an object at once, combining the perceiving human with the mechanical camera, marking both the stilled time of the photograph and the infinite time of the gaze…”

From Windows Onto Things: The Phenomenology of Glass in Josef Sudek’s Photography

Psychopomp is about grief.
Psychopomp prefers the dark.
Psychopomp is standing vigil.
Psychopomp is a midwife to souls crossing into the underworld.
Psychopomp is a mediumistic venue where deals with the devil may be made.
Psychopomp repeatedly casts a gaze across the threshold.
Psychopomp has no room to move.
Psychopomp is where paths converge.
Psychopomp is a certain way of looking.
Psychopomp is at the crossroad.
Psychopomp shows the possibility of all things.
Psychopomp has an antipathy for the truth of static form.
Psychopomp lifts the veil between worlds.
Psychopomp is entombed.
Psychopomp crosses the boundary.
Psychopomp exists in a polymorphic alternative reality.
Psychopomp stands awake at night, looking out of the window.
Psychopomp is the spectre of your dreams and your desires.
Psychopomp is ancient magic at the intersection of these four roads.
Psychopomp is impulse and longing that twitches to life at the crossroad.
Psychopomp has grown full and dirty with sorrows.
Psychopomp is a comfort in the dark.
Psychopomp can hear a voice calling.
Psychopomp presses together all these single moments.
Psychopomp opens a doorway to a chthonic unknown place.
Psychopomp is compulsive.
Psychopomp is a transformational process.
Psychopomp confronts a necessity of choice.
Psychopomp is an act of devotional watching.
Psychopomp slides from one state to another.
Psychopomp reanimates nightly.
Psychopomp is a trickster.
Psychopomp stares into the mirror and sees its own reflection.
Psychopomp returns to the window.
Psychopomp looks and looks and looks.

Psychopomp (2018-2019) - 34 diptychs / 35mm

PSYCHOPOMP: From the Greek psukhopompos, meaning ‘soul conductor’. In mythology, a psychopomp is a midwife to the human psyche, guiding souls to the place of the dead; A trickster or shapeshifter, a mediator between conscious and unconscious's realms.

Standing at the window there occurs a kind of devotional daydreaming and nightwatching, the psychopomp performs a solitary vigil.

This photographic project is a documentation of a compulsive act of looking. Psychopomp compresses the moments of wakefulness that pass across the glass and reflects the gaze of both the camera and the human eye, a gaze that is cast again and again over the transitional space of the crossroad.

Psychopomp (2018-2019) - 34 diptychs with text / 35mm

Psychopomp (2018-2019) - 34 diptychs / 35mm

WLOOW