Secret Life, HD video transferred from 16 mm and photo stills, 2008

Secret Life is the first of the Secrets Trilogy; a cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life and is followed by Secret Machine (2009) and Six Easy Pieces (2010).

Secret Life portrays a woman trapped in an apartment with a life of its own. Transcending the narrative horizons of human desire, the film visits upon us a glimpse of a shared and sacred reality. A work that defies the ultimate metaphysical taboos of temporality by combining novel technique with intrepid philosophical vision; and daring to present that which is seldom, if ever, portrayed in any artistic medium.
Impossibilities are made possible through Reynolds’ signature aesthetic, a lens that can fill one with reverence for the mundane.
Have you ever wondered what time sees, experiences? Without mortal assumptions about time, the occupant of the apartment is no longer limited even to unique location, but here, seen through the eye of time, space itself is now become alive. Without the context of space and time, the woman’s mind collapses and neglects the organization of her experience, leaving her only with sensations. The viewer may ask: Is it her mind or is it time itself that creates the uncontrolled and uncontrollable environment? The work suggests that all living things are endowed with consciousness, meaning all living things have awareness. While the space increases in its activity, the woman becomes an ever more passive element in her world. She moves at a mechanical speed and her mind is like a clock whose hands pin the events of her life to the tapestry of time, all the while, the truth is transcendentally reflected in the mechanical eye of the camera. Her thoughts escape her and come to life, growing like the plants that inhabit the space around her: living, searching, feeling, breathing and dying.