As If we were still lovers XI
As If We Were Still Lovers is an ongoing series of unique works depicting closely cropped fragments of women dancing in discos. Hands, sleeves and gestures evoke the visual language of the early 1980s while withholding the wider scene. The figures remain anonymous, suspended between lived memory and cultural imagination.
Rather than beginning with photographs, Holman starts with writing. He records detailed recollections of remembered images of girls dancing in discos and appearing on television during the early 1980s. These texts become prompts for AI image generation before being re-photographed directly from a television screen. Each work therefore passes through successive technological translations, occupying a space between recollection, simulation and material object.
This methodology resonates with Mark Fisher's concept of hauntology, in which contemporary culture is inhabited by the ghosts of unrealised futures and mediated memories. The works do not reconstruct the past faithfully, but occupy the unstable territory where personal memory, collective cultural imagery and contemporary image technologies intersect.
Each unique C-type photograph is mounted onto aluminium and presented within a hand-crafted tulipwood museum-conservation frame fitted with anti-reflective glazing. Holman considers these works to be objects rather than pictures. Their physical construction combines advanced image-making technologies with traditional craftsmanship, embodying the central proposition of the series: that new technologies continually reshape who has access to cultural production, allowing the participant to become the producer. The series currently comprises thirteen unique works.