Somnimorphs

News

I am extremely pleased to say that this work has been featured in the prestigious Dodho Magazine. Many thanks to Dídac Panés and his colleagues. Please click the link to see more.

Somnimorphs is a body of multiple-exposure, light-painted photographs that investigates the threshold between emotion, trauma, and autistic perception, my particular way of sensing and organising experience. These images arise from a space where perception does not passively receive the world but actively constructs it, often producing impressions that feel elusive, warped, or difficult to articulate.

Approaching the camera as an expressive tool rather than a recording device, I work with extended, multiple exposures, using light and form as a material to build, interrupt, and layer within a single frame. These accumulated marks unsettle the idea of photography as a record of a single, objective instant, allowing the image instead to hold fragments, overlaps, and disruptions that echo internal experience.

The work centres on states that resist clear language yet shape how we perceive and act. The figures or forms that surface are unstable, hovering between recognition, strangeness and the alien, never fully resolved, continually shifting as if searching for coherence.

References to saints, false prophets, or internal presences point to the questions at the core of the series: what inhabits us beneath conscious thought? Are these traces of memory, embodiments of trauma, or mental constructs that protect or destabilise? How do we relate to them, through belief, resistance, or identification, and what occurs when the distinction between self and these entities begins to erode?

Autistic perception is integral to the work’s formation. Sensory experience can feel intensified and fragmented, while emotions often register as immediate, physical force. Rather than explaining this condition, the images attempt to translate it, forming a visual language that carries its intensity, ambiguity, and oscillation between insight and disorientation.

Darkness functions here as more than negative space; it becomes a deep, indeterminate field from which forms emerge and into which they dissolve. It offers no fixed meaning, instead inviting viewers to project their own interpretations and responses. As a result, the images operate less as representations and more as encounters that unfold differently for each person.

At their core, Somnimorphs offer temporary form to what cannot be fully grasped; the forces that move through us subtly or violently, without ever settling into clarity, and to hold them, however briefly, within view.

Somnimorphs

The Works

Vessel

Approach

Forming

Rind

Carapace

Dissoloution

Sheath

Tumult

Gestation

Somnimorph Husk

Embryo

Mitosis

Membrane

Nidametum

Hibernation

Petrification

Contraction

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Will Arden

Based in the UK, Will Arden has thirty-five-years’ experience in art, illustration, and publishing. Several years ago, a significant condition affecting one eye, prevented him from continuing his work in those fields. Unable to just turn off the creative impulses that have long driven his practice, he turned to photography as a new means of expression.

He approaches photography not as a tool for capturing a single, fixed moment, but as a medium that can be shaped and manipulated within the camera itself. Through techniques such as multiple, long exposures and controlled lighting, his work moves beyond documentation, becoming a process of construction and transformation.

Throughout his career, Will has been guided by a deep commitment to visual storytelling. In photography, this has evolved into a quieter, more contemplative form, with a focus on still life, abstract, and conceptual subjects. His images do not seek to explain, but to suggest—inviting the viewer into a space where meaning remains open and fluid.

Often inspired by the subtle, infinite complexities of natural and abstract forms, his work makes use of shadow, carefully orchestrated light, and a restrained palette. The resulting images feel both composed and cinematic, balancing precision with ambiguity. Rather than prescribing a narrative, they offer an atmosphere that encourages reflection, interpretation, and a lingering sense of the unresolved.

Contact

Phone:
07514906848

Email:
will@willarden.co.uk

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A 48 page folio book 'Somnimorphs: The Abyssal Saints' is currently in production, containing the first phase of the project images and accompanying text.

Also, individual prints and a selected portfolio will shortly become available.

Please do subscribe for news and updates or simply to register interest.

Thankyou.