Dark Corners

None of the images at Impressions Gallery, Bradford are titled, as the exhibition is constructed almost in book form on the gallery walls. The curation takes us through the series (made in Moldova and Soho in 2006/7) and is punctuated with quotes from the women themselves; from relatives who have 'lost' girls to the sex trafficking industry; from their children, and from the photographer. The resulting narrative is tragic and at times disturbing.
This image (shot on 6x6 format in colour)is a harrowing still life that indicates a pained existence. Significantly there are no acts of sex or violence shown in any part of the exhibition, but their traces are evident. The image shows a 'home corner' where a table has been brightened by a dirty pink cloth. Someone has attempted to hide the filthy concrete walls with a stained, brown blanket, and a pot elephant avoids our gaze between the two.
The other objects on the table tell a tale of cigarettes, a hot drink, and maybe a link to the outside world via the mobile phone charger that hangs abandoned between the mug and the ashtray. A glass jar is almost full of a brown liquid which is covered by it's upturned lid. There is a small unidentifiable object in the lid, that invites speculation. Finally we see some cultural and familial reference in the two hand-coloured portraits which hang at odd levels in the corner. The young couple, and the two men with the baby are hard to place in time or geography. If anything they belong to someone specific, who could at the same time be no-one.
This is a stripped down existence. A life reduced to measure by the small segments of time, which the clock is there to record. A calendar on the wall, and the hands of the clock remind us of the cameras primary function- to preserve a moment in time and history. As one girl comments, "why would you bring up my life again?" For these are images of lives left behind, at the same time containing the assurance that this reduction of a life has in no way come to an end.
As Mark Sealy points out in his 2009 essay, Beyond the Lens, 'The interiority of the photographic work, the empty rooms, the dark claustrophobic spaces, portray a chronic condition of despair and highlight the catastrophic conditions that make it possible for human trafficking to thrive.' Indeed whilst in the gallery space we are contained, but our freedom to walk away from these difficult images only serves to emphasise our difference/distance from the subjects shown here. If this discomfort leads us to act or to think, then perhaps Dana Popa's work is done.

Helen Clarke