Fine art photographer Yas Crawford HonFRPS is finding a way to describe what she does.
“There’s a wonderful quote by Walter Benjamin, from 1932,” Crawford says, referring to the German-Jewish literary critic and cultural theorist best known for his essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’.
“He says, ‘I have long, indeed for years, played with the idea of life – bios – graphically on a map.’ And that, for me, encapsulates quite a lot of what I do.”
While photography had been an integral part of Crawford’s life since she was a child, her background is rooted in geology. Studying the subject at Cardiff University allowed her to view the world in 3D, she says, inspiring an entirely new way of seeing.
It was a sudden illness – later to be diagnosed as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), or chronic fatigue syndrome – that led Crawford back to photography, and ultimately choosing a new career.
She now works in what she calls ‘The Grey Space’, an area between the disciplines of art and science. The visual artist, who received an Honorary Fellowship in the 2024 RPS Awards, has explored this concept with Associate Professor Fran Arrigon of Kingston University in the podcast What’s Art Got to Do With It?
Through various collaborations, and working across media – digital, analogue, video, illustration and camera-less techniques – Crawford creates artworks that plunge us into unknown depths, uncharted territory, and the gaps beyond human knowledge.
The artist, who achieved her RPS Associate in 2019, explains: “[The Grey Space] is analogous to attempting to understand the complexities of the Black Hole, dark matter or the part of our brains we do not use.
“[It’s] where disciplines intersect, a place where we are encouraged to embrace uncertainty and challenge the boundaries of conventional understanding, embarking on a journey that is as much about the questions as it is about the answers.”
Image credits clockwise from main: ‘The eye IIIIb, 2022’ by Yas Crawford HonFRPS in collaboration with the Australian National University Neuronal Signalling Team; ‘Cellular Vd, 2021’ from the series Cellular Flow by Yas Crawford HonFRPS; ‘Inception O, 2023’ from the series Nature Energy Technology by Yas Crawford HonFRPS.
Discover more work by Yas Crawford HonFRPS and meet some of the 2024 RPS Awards recipients in the January-March 2025 issue of the RPS Journal.
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