Ëpha Roe- The Waves Of An Afternoon

Roe is an English Photographer based in Brighton and Hove. A graduate of Art History, Museum Curating and Photography, she first submitted her work in August of 2017 and presented in Issue #4 of Untitled Collective.

The Waves of an Afternoon is a photo book put together from a different practices; 35mm & 120mm film, a polaroid, six poems and one contact sheet.

With influeneces from Ukranian-born American filmmaker Maya Deren, Roe’s book began from overthinking the process of a project.

With its main influences from the surreal filmmaker, Maya Deren, 'The Waves of An Afternoon' is a photo book in homage to the unfinished. Under the guise of a discoverer of an old film reel, the book attempts to piece together a lost story from a dead author through individual film stills under six 'acts'.

The unseen protagonist is taken through a series of environments, where s/he meets several mysterious figures, each baring an illuminative relation to their surroundings. The book is put together with a significance placed on any 'lost' scenes that were not recovered during the discovery of the film reel. As such, the blank pages perform and play as part of the story, just as the images do themselves.

Put together from 35 & 120mm images, one polaroid, six poems and one contact sheet, 'The Waves' features and expresses a project enhanced by its process and multidisciplinary practice.”

When did you Graduate and how did you like your time at University?

I graduated from my bachelors at De Montfort in 2013. University was great, but I didn’t properly get to grips with independent study until my third year. Self-structuring my time has been one of those long and steep learning curves that I’m only now getting used to dealing with. But I miss the gift of time, structure and openness that University gives you - a difficult balance to maintain in everyday life. I think this is partly my reasoning for wanting to go back. Aside from the obvious interest in my subject.

We have just seen the wonderful news of your acceptance to the University of Brighton for a Ph.D. Congratulations! Where do you expect this will lead you?

Thank you! Great question. I perhaps can’t say what I expect, rather only what I would like to happen. It’s a dream to maintain one foot in academic research with the other in my creative practice. The process of a practice-led Ph.D. allows you exactly that, but whether or not it will be feasible for me to carry this on post graduation isn’t entirely clear. I’ve always wanted to teach but it’s never something I think I could give myself to, wholly.

Conversely, the effects that free time has on your creative practice isn’t always necessarily conducive to making work, so I think this balance for me would be ideal.

Who are your influences?

I find myself mostly influenced by anything that triggers me emotionally. I've had my work once described as 'bleak and beautiful', which is something that I've since decided to self-identify with. Artists that seem to trigger me specifically are: Maya Deren, Emmet Gowin, Awoiska van der Molen, Minor White, Robert Rauchenberg (particularly his 'Combines'), Anne Carson ('An Autobiography of Red'), John Virtue ('The Sea') and Lucien Hervé.

Are you currently working on anything new?

At the moment I am working on and researching the connections between Sussex, folklore and the Devil. Sometime last year I stumbled upon some graffiti just down the road from where I live which read, in large capital letters, ‘HAIL SATAN’, on the bridge over the railway towards Hove station. It made me laugh every time I saw it — especially considering the middle-class, suburban surroundings that I live in — and it’s kick-started this interest in the folklore around Sussex and the Devil.

Since discovering the first graffiti, I’ve since found five others of varying sizes within about a half a mile radius. I’m unsure yet as to how this project is going to progress, but at the moment I’m enjoying reading up on the folk histories and exploring the possibility of photographically interpreting certain folk tales: such as running anti-clockwise around Chanctonbury Ring until the Devil appears with a hot bowl of soup in exchange for your soul.

On top of that I am also in the middle of promoting & touring my folk-band's debut album 'The Crowing', as well as working on a development of my latest project 'At Land and Sea', in preparation for the Brighton Photo Fringe submission deadline.

Website: www.epharoe.com