Sometimes Love Doesn't Matter, Sometimes It Does Ed. 2 of 25

Sometimes Love Doesn't Matter, (Sometimes It Does).
Printed on ILFORD GALERIE Gold Fibre Gloss 310gsm — a traditional fibre-based paper offering exceptional tonal range and depth, echoing the timeless craft of darkroom printing.
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A figure dissolves into waves of fluorescent pink, green, and yellow — a moment of softness and defiance in equal measure. Sometimes Love Doesn’t Matter, Sometimes It Does speaks to the contradictions of emotion: where love feels both fleeting and infinite. The colours pulse with quiet urgency, tracing the fine line between distance and devotion.
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By 2012, “Real Time” had become one of those cultural buzzwords — the promise of instant connection in a world speeding beyond comprehension. For artist Claire Letitia, then in her early 30s, it also described the feeling of life itself: wild, creative, and constantly in flux. The series emerged from editorial fashion stories she conceptualised , produced, and photographed during that era — digital images reworked into something raw, personal, and stripped of polish.

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Through her own retouching technique, she reduced each photograph to elemental black-and-white forms — echoing both the aesthetic minimalism of the time and the chaos of lived experience. Working at Blanco Negro in Redfern — home to Sydney’s only digital enlarger — she began translating these digital works back into analogue form. Each piece started with cotton rag paper hand-painted in archival pigments and washes, then coated with Liquid Light and exposed through the Silver Gelatin process.

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The result is a dialogue between precision and accident, technology and touch — a series that questions what “real time” ever truly meant. These works don’t capture a fixed moment; they breathe it — alive, shifting, and still becoming.

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While the original silver-gelatin prints from Real Time were produced in 2012 using the digital enlarger at Blanco Negro, these new editions are high-fidelity reproductions printed on satin canvas. Each retains the integrity of the original process through Claire Letitia’s tonal calibrations and hand finishing. Selected original darkroom prints remain in private collections, and a small number of vintage prints will be re-released alongside these new limited-edition works.

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"The vision, scale and aptitude of the show expressed narratives through a series of provocative and appropriated images that seemed familiar yet dangerous. The installation displayed again Claire’s inimitable view of the world.”
— Kon Gouriotis OAM, Editor, Artist Profile
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Freedom sits at the heart of my work — the freedom to look, to feel, and to question what’s real and what’s constructed. Every image becomes a negotiation between truth and illusion, power and play, self and story.

Working with film in darkrooms since the age of fourteen taught me to slow down — to let the light speak before I do. That respect for process continues to guide me, even as I move between analogue and digital worlds. Influences such as Tracey Moffatt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and Barbara Kruger have shaped how I navigate the theatre of image-making — and the freedoms hidden within it.

From Cowboys to Bondi Pop and Hollywood, my work explores how desire, fame, and fantasy blur the lines between who we are and who we pretend to be. Alongside this, my years working in remote communities and with Indigenous Nations have deepened my understanding of storytelling, belonging, and the responsibilities that come with representing culture. That dialogue — between freedom and accountability, image and truth — sits at the core of everything I make.

My installation He Was Always Watching, She Never Knew, presented on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, was produced and project managed by me.

“I make pictures as a way of navigating life. The colours, the lines, and the light intermingle to form a single pattern — different every time, no matter what. Just before I make a picture, I feel this strong energy force. It takes over. In that moment, I feel real, I feel honest… and I feel alive.” — Claire Letitia Reynolds