The camera I took with me to Venice belonged to my dad; he bought it in the 1980s and it has travelled with him all over the world. Some of the first photographs of me to ever exist were taken on this camera. It hadn’t been used in decades, but I asked him if I could have it; I wanted to experiment with taking photographs more intentionally again, submitting to the unknown of a chemical process rather than the certain perfection of my iPhone. I liked that I wouldn’t know how they turned out until I got home.

When using a camera older than you are, temporality is an easy thing to think about, particularly during the biennale when the past, so vividly present in a place like Venice, and contemporary thought, art, and politic collides. I could take a photo standing on the Academia Bridge, and it would be the same photo my dad had taken when he visited the city before I was born; he and I decades apart, sharing that view in a world that is so very different.

Shame Parade considers this too, time and location, mirrored experiences, slotting itself into the in between. Between Scotland and the Philippines, between then and now, between silence and noise. The history of a word and its practice, charivari, tying together varied places, times and people. There are no easy answers or straightforward perspectives and within that variety and nuance the work finds its home. At a time when transphobia, and transmisogyny in particular, is on the rise, the exhibition looks outward, centring shame but not defined by it, defiant and unapologetic in taking a means of control and using it for transformation.

The result doesn’t have to be perfect. The clock is ticking but time isn’t running out. The camera still works.

Charlotte Hems Rogers is part of the curatorial team for Mount Stuart’s Contemporary Visual Arts Programme.

Camera + film: 

Nikkormat FT3

Kodak UltraMax 400