It is seemingly impossible to eschew the split-second, fragmentary nature of photography. The shutter exposes a single moment, definable only by our applied emotional contribution — without this applied meaning, the image rests in esoteric meaningless — unsullied and mechanical. The New Yorker, Michelle Peralta, entertains the notion of dichotomies and split-second happenings in day-to-day living, particularly with the themes: dynamic versus inert, love versus loss and presence versus absence. The motif being: all these themes are the result of a single moment; the cock and snap of the shutter; the crystallisation of glass and locking of aperture blades.

The juvenilia of Peralta’s photographs give a firsthand account of sprightly adventure and enigmatic characters — a soaking up of experience. Her portraiture gives a sense of transience personified in each of the subjects; there is a rapport between subject and sitter, like the yarn of a wizened sailor to his eager-eared crewmen. There is a sense of inclusion from Peralta’s imagery, a documenter of the transience of life, of its eddying ontology, and the movement from existent to existence.

Accompanying Peralta’s work in Cluster’s ‘P&P Past Exhibitors’ list a quotation from Carl Jung reads: ‘The greater the contrast, the greater the potential... there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind’. Here the literary segway between tension and dichotomy is established, instinctively colouring Peralta’s work with meaning. In her body of work the relationship between ‘flora and fauna’ is examined, with reference to the dichotomies of ‘man and nature’. A ‘gentle yet present tension’ is purportedly desired between the landscape, teeming with life and colour, and the Caribbeans who occupy the area. However, other themes are apparent and working beneath the surface in Peralta’s aesthetic..

Similar to the soft-hued, subtle approach of Peralta’s work is the photographer Mateo Sensi. With a lo-fi, hazy aesthetic, each image plays with the art of storytelling and suggestion. Photographs of a person’s back naturally piques suggestion of mystery. It is an enigmatic pose, toying with ideas of perception and body forms — is there a right way to ‘take someone’s portrait?’. This is apparent in Sensi’s Yellow Sweater photograph. The screen between sitter and photographer further distorts meaning. The image seems to garble meaning, occupying a place between reality and fiction.