Sid White-Jones

Degree: BA (Hons) Photography
University: Norwich University of the Arts
Graduation Year: 2019

New Blood Art Commentary

Although the visual language of Sid White-Jones’s work is deeply photographic -rooted in salvaged negatives, old slides, and analog processes -he’s consciously presenting the finished works as paintings. When he refers to them as “original painting in ink on canvas,” he’s signalling a shift in medium identity, not just process. The ink, the canvas, the texture, the scale - all of that moves the work away from being a photograph of something and toward being a material object in itself.

This shift is rich with meaning. He’s not just re-presenting memory through image - he’s enacting a kind of transference between media. What begins as a photograph is subjected to cycles of distress, distortion, and reassembly - until it emerges as something else entirely. A painting. A residue. A reformation. It’s like he’s working through the photograph’s unconscious - exposing its cracks, letting it bleed, pressing it into new skin. Where memory and rupture sit side by side. It’s tender, brittle, and strange -like trying to hold a scent or trace that’s already begun to fade.

Artist Statement

My practice revolves around salvaging and re-presenting discarded media, such as old photographs, negatives, and slides, through an arduous process of physical, chemical, and digital manipulation. Small celluloid collages are reconstructed onto canvas, undergoing cycles of transformation that challenge the rigidity of the photographic medium, pushing it toward a more painterly, textured expression.

In their anonymity, these glimpses of the past become open-ended narratives, shaped by the eyes of those who encounter them. In reviving these fragments, I find myself in the fragile space between permanence and impermanence, questioning what is preserved, what fades, what endures, and how images gain new meaning through time.