Hazel May Eckert’s Soft Focus series has been created from the images she encounters on her iPhone. As all too commonly experienced, when the wifi connection is low, or the signal gets stuck, otherwise clear photographs become “failed”, frozen, partially-rendered, and blurry images. Eckert refers to these images as “time lags”: fleeting visualizations of time, place, and impermanence.

Typically experienced with frustration and impatience, Eckert considers how these cloudy images in awkward stages of becoming might rather be translated as objects of beauty and contemplation; something to be reflected upon, and preserved. The works included in this series are founded from screen captures of these unresolved iPhone images. Blurry impressions of people, places, and moments gel into washes of color, obscure traces, and studies of light. Soft Focus is a collection of photographic prints that encourage us to see the iPhone and other digital technologies as fickle collaborators in the documentation of our personal histories and what value, if any, “time lag” glitches carry as blind records of time.

Hazel May Eckert received a BFA in printmaking from OCAD University (2008) and a diploma in graphic design from the College of the North Atlantic (2017). Eckert’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and she the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and residencies from the Ontario Arts Council, ArtsNL, Open Studio and The Rooms. She is also the creator of Nothing New, an independent publishing insignia focused on the production of small-scale artist editions and contemporary print-based works. Eckert is currently based in St. John’s, NL.