Dark Flow

‘Dark Flow’ is a place of sublime beauty and conceptual musing with seven monochrome photographic pieces (each measuring 78cm x 78cm), which follow a non-linear narrative.

By means of travelling through a city, the work develops as a journey, giving shape to our thoughts and our memories. The metropolis is the material for invention and reinvention, where the intention is to push the issue of observation and alter the meaning of the urban landscape.

The subject becomes the flow of space, marked by the intersections of light playing on architectural structures. Space here is expansive, fluid and flowing with the thin layering of black marks, creating tones of subtlety and depth. On closer inspection, certain images dissolve into traces of minute detail while others belong to the genre of astrological findings.

In an age of digital manipulation, Diamond chooses to shoot wholly ‘in camera’. Experimenting with long exposure combined with the technical capabilities of digital format, the compositions are diffused with a space-age sensibility.

With a background in electronic engineering and presently teaching physics, Diamond matches his theory with observation. Exploring abstraction to express ideas of cosmology and man’s hubristic nature, the practice deals with revealing invisible forms that go unnoticed in the observable realm. Deconstructing each frame, a new plane of another scale presents itself.

The black-and-white environment reflects upon the discovery of ‘Dark Flow’ by cosmologist Sasha Kashlinsky at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. In 2008 the identification of an ‘unusual pattern in motion of around 800 galaxy clusters appeared to be streaming at great speed towards a region in the sky’ - suggests that ‘beyond the visible edge of our cosmos… there is a potential portal to other universes’.¹

Through his work Diamond casts a critical eye on the increasing polarisation within Britain – where the concern is ‘a question of morality’. Society’s needs are sacrificed at the altar of self-interest, which breeds a culture of entitlement. Evidence of this is the lopsided distribution of wealth where ‘the top 1 per cent have something in the region of 20 per cent of the wealth and the top 10 per cent hold 50 per cent… and hedge-fund managers, chief executives or politicians-turned-consultants’² prosper. A view recently espoused by a former oil executive, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans.³

Diamond distils the dark flow of humanity whilst interpreting leading scientific thought in an engaging way so that it challenges the mind to enter innumerable realms.