Drawn to Know (2000)

Further exploring our innate curiosity and fascination for other people, and the contact possible through looking, Goodwin has created the three sequences of images, entitled Drawn to Know, in which he works with photographs of strangers he has taken surreptitiously in public spaces. These individuals have been caught at moments of introspection.

Approaching these small portraits, the viewer becomes aware of how Goodwin has traced and worked with the contours and subtleties of the individual heads and faces, replacing each original photograph, eventually totally working over them with drawing. In Drawn to Know - 14 X Woman Goodwin examines a sequence of frames taken from when he has tracked an old woman with his video camera as he passes her. In the matrix of drawn marks he holds and contemplates this fleeting encounter longer.

 
 
In an attempt to discover, and make familiar, these tracings simultaneously create a fictionalisation of each character. As with Drawn to Know - 6 X Man where he traces the same photograph six times delicately shifting the quality of the man's character each time.

 
 
Furthermore as with the Drawn to Know - 12 X People the viewer moves along the sequence involving themselves with each individual, starting their own unique speculation about, for example, factual details such as age, profession where each individual may come from, as well as assessing them emotionally and physically. The veil of drawn marks imposed on these people by Goodwin complicates and distorts the usual dynamic between, a viewer and the person in a portrait photograph. The drawing on these photographs acts as an ever present remnant of Goodwin's own time investment, a by product of processing these essentially unknowable individuals.