The photographs of Michael Boran track the fleeting traces of interactions between people and places. Tracing and mapping different movements and directions across the surface, they open up a bird’s eye view of underlying patterns and shifting co-ordinates. Often utilising aerial viewpoints from a height at which the camera seems to be about to float away from the world, Boran’s photographs offer the viewer unfamiliar visions of the familiar. Notions of scale and transference between micro and macro-cosmos are explored in a manner of mapmaking.
Searching, positioning and mapping are recurrent themes both by the artist and the protagonists who seem to wander into the frame. These maps attempt to measure not only the four points of the pictorial compass, but also look inward, into the realm of mystery, synchronicity and underlying principals. Boran’s scientific approach is also evident in the general sense in which he moves beyond questioning our notions of the real, to attempt a deeper analysis of the actual through the creation of ‘photographic’ evidence. His images suggest an experimental laboratory of the everyday, presenting a map of a journey which moves from the specific to the underlying principals that govern.