Doubling up the visual impact - infrared on metal

There is no standing still. Not in life, not in the arts. Unless marked with an expiration date.

This is also true in photography. Its history is marked with experimentation.

I saw, and then became fascinated, with putting my images - digital collages and photography - on a metal substrate that had been brushed and prepared with patinas. When the image was laminated to the metal, I found myself with a mixed media object providing a tension between the surface and subsurface.

Then, I took up digital infrared photography to give me a different starting point. Not better, just different.

That is, of course, process and media - and these can interact and feed off the vision itself.

This is part of the new adventure where we can explore older, deeper human concerns.

One of the images I selected for Insight on Metal is from my series Israel Infrared. That country is a mixture of different cultures with a fascinating history that continues to bedevil the modern world. One of the memorials in Israel - and there are many - is Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Photographs by visitors were not allowed inside, but then, the outside view presented its own fascination of metal, glass and concrete. Trying to capture the heart of any place, especially a memorial with its dedicated memories, is more than a challenge. Perhaps presumptuous. And yet, we artists re-imagine the world and the human experience. It is a way we own the world. This is my Yad Vashem.

Joe Nalven