David Edwards speaks about his newest series:

MRI

This body of work is both personal and universal. In 2016 I found myself with a cancer diagnosis and the recipient of countless MRIs. For those of us who have had one, it is a loud, rhythmic, surreal outer body experience. Up to that moment I had been a photographer for 33 years. I had a lifetime of exploration, observing and making photographs with a camera both professionally and artistically. Now, reality seemed to turn inside out.

As a result of this new normal, I began to create my own MRIs. I call them MRIs: mirrored reverse images. The process of creating these MRIs has become a photographic obsession over the past 6 years. I have since began to make photographs with the goal of creating images that will make interesting MRIs. The MRI series of photographs came out of the anticipation and dread of being a serial MRI recipient. I began to consider all the infinite number of images just hidden out of reach in my head. I found myself unexpectedly pre-visualizing images I had previously taken or was actively taking in duplicate combinations. These images mimic the symmetrical structure of the brain in photographic form to artificially reveal what a memory of an object, person, place or landscape might look like if you could retrieve the memory vividly from your brain. The final product is completely broken down from the initial image and the beauty is in this transformation recreation.

The process involves repeating and reversing the images. I often mimic early analogue photographic processes such as pseudo-solarization, an interplay between positive and negative film development, and traditional print toning. The images break down even further, the new image becomes something entirely different than the original subject. I view these works as a deconstruction to the information already scattered about in your mind and essentially lost unless you decide to give it a new form: a second life beyond its original reality.

Edwards taught at the Gibbes Museum Studio for many years and had his photography business thriving.  He also has several series of Charleston works mostly from the 1990s.