The Metamorphosis photographic works translate the installation into intimate visual studies of paper, light, and fragility. Through macro observation, folded butterflies become abstract landscapes where gesture, memory, and transformation are held in stillness.
PHANTOM AFFECTION
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Embers of Emancipation
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Never Forget
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
State of Being
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Heart Sick
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Fragments of Love
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Wish You Were Here
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Abject Grief
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Paper Lace
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Intersected
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Traces of the Past
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Traces of Light
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Traces of Darknes
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Identity
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Bokeh dreams
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Memory Road Trips
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
Edge of the World
Metamorphosis (Personal Elegies) 2022
Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP
Image Size: 64 x 80 cm
ABOUT THE SERIES
Metamorphosis explores personal grief through repeated acts of folding. Thousands of origami butterflies accumulate into a fragile installation where memory, ritual, and time are translated into material form.
Commenced: 2020
Status: Complete
Works:
• 2,444 origami butterflies
• site installation
• installation films
• photographic works
• artist workbook
• catalogue
EXPLORE
→ Available for Acquisition: 18
→ Commission Enquiries
MATERIALS
Archival paper
Japanese origami techniques
Handwritten texts
Outdoor installation
Archival pigment photography
Video documentation
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS
The Metamorphosis photographic works emerge from the installation as acts of close observation. Where the installation gathers thousands of butterflies into a fragile field of duration, the photographs isolate individual gestures of folding, transforming the collective landscape into intimate studies of material, light, and memory.
Working at a macro scale, the camera moves across the surfaces of folded paper as though traversing a landscape. Creases, edges, pencil marks, translucent layers of vellum and tissue paper, and traces of decorative elements become compositional structures. These details reveal the physical evidence of making – hands that folded, surfaces that carried marks, and time that accumulated through repetition.
The photographs therefore shift the register of the work from spatial experience to sustained attention. The installation invites movement through a field; the photographs ask the viewer to linger with a single fragment. By isolating moments within the installation, the images allow the fragile gestures of folding to be observed with greater intimacy.
Light plays a central role in this translation. Shallow depth of field and shifting focus dissolve the boundaries of the butterflies, allowing colour and form to move between abstraction and recognition. In this way, the photographs echo the instability of memory itself: details emerge, soften, and reappear as partial traces rather than fixed images.
These works extend the language of Metamorphosis beyond the installation. If the field of butterflies records duration through accumulation, the photographs explore how memory persists through fragments. Small material moments that hold the weight of larger experience.
The photographic works therefore operate as quiet acts of attention within the broader project, sustaining the installation’s gesture of documentation as elegy by allowing fragile details to remain visible, even as the installation itself changes with time.
Metamorphosis formed the basis of my BA Honours in Visual Multimedia Arts, completed Cum Laude at UNISA in 2025. Related work from the series, Metamorphosis of Memory: Unfolding Tomorrow’s Dialogue (2024), received a Certificate of Artistic Merit from Luxembourg Art Prize 2024.
While Metamorphosis emerges from personal grief, later bodies of work expand this exploration toward broader material and ecological elegies.
Metamorphosis is part of Material Elegies – an ongoing practice investigating loss across personal and ecological scales through vulnerable materials and deliberate witness.
CREDITS
Photography and videography:
Martin Short, Conrad Nel and Stephen Russell-Brett
© Stephen Russell-Brett, 2020
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