Will Arden
photographer
my Approach
For me, the camera is no different to a brush, pencil or chisel, it's simply the medium I use to make images. Rather than recording the world as it is, I use long, multiple exposures, light painting, hand held filters and the physical manipulation of light, objects and space to construct photographs that exist somewhere between observation and imagination.
My work is built in layers.
Each decision, exposure and intervention is informed by the way I experience the world through autism, hypermobility, chronic pain and impaired vision.
The finished image isn't intended to illustrate those experiences directly, but to give form to sensations and emotional states that are often difficult to express in words.
My work will soon be available as a series of both open and limited edition prints.
I am currently sourcing the ideal fine art print partner that can provide both the accuracy of colour and quality of materials that I require..
The print store will be open very soon. In the meantime, should you be interested in purchasing work then please get in touch below.
Abyssal Saints is a series of works that investigates the threshold between emotion, trauma, and autistic perception, my particular way of sensing and organising experience. These images arise from a space where perception does not passively receive the world but actively constructs it, often producing impressions that feel elusive, warped, or difficult to articulate.
The work centres on states that resist clear language yet shape how we perceive and act. The figures or forms that surface are unstable, hovering between recognition, strangeness and the alien, never fully resolved, continually shifting as if searching for coherence.
References to saints, false prophets, or internal presences point to the questions at the core of the series: what inhabits us beneath conscious thought? Are these traces of memory, embodiments of trauma, or mental constructs that protect or destabilise? How do we relate to them, through belief, resistance, or identification, and what occurs when the distinction between self and these entities begins to erode?
Darkness functions here as more than negative space; it becomes a deep, indeterminate field from which forms emerge and into which they dissolve. It offers no fixed meaning, instead inviting viewers to project their own interpretations and responses. As a result, the images operate less as representations and more as encounters that unfold differently for each person.
I have collected all these images into a softcover 88 page photobook; printed on heavyweight silk paper, and is available for £15.95 + Postage. Please click button below for more details.
the abyssal saints
photobook
The Abyssal Saints project was recently featured in Dodho magazine. Read the feature here.
Will Arden
Will Arden is a UK-based photographer with a background spanning more than thirty-five years in art, illustration and publishing.
As an author, illustrator and cartoonist working under the pen name Alborozo, he created books for children and was a contributing cartoonist to publications such as Private Eye and Punch, before a condition affecting the vision in one eye made it impossible to continue working in those fields, leading him to photography as a new creative medium.
His work is centred on conceptual ideas, exploring perception, ambiguity and the ways we interpret our perceived realities.
His work draws on a wide range of influences, from natural forms to Renaissance and Dutch painting, cinema and literature. These references shape the atmosphere and composition of the images without dictating their meaning, leaving space for viewers to make their own connections.