Helen Stead's work is predominantly photography based and her most recent works have been an experimentation of social documentary and candid photography with the use of camera trap equipment, a device which is more commonly used by wildlife conservationists. Since 2011 she has been exploring the potential of these camera traps and utilising its motion sensor and infra red settings that are more typically used to capture photographs of animals in the wild. Helen have taken the trap out of its normal setting and have put it in a city environment in an attempt to document humans as ‘social animals’ and also reflect on how CCTV and surveillance is used in Britain. After rigorously testing different methods of using the traps it has produced a number of interesting results. The first body of works she ‘captured’ where taken by strapping the camera around her waist and recorded mapped journeys and walks around Salford and Manchester City Centre. The results are vivid, impressionistic landscapes of the environment which captured the movement of the city with a distorted and warped quality as the motion sensor was triggered rapidly as people and cars passed in front of the device. The second body of work that was produced with the camera trap was based in Blackpool where the artist chose to attach the camera to various places including a local casino and amusement arcade and because the camera was kept stationary the images are much more focused and have an almost voyeuristic quality to them. The subject of memory and the unconscious often underpin these working methods as she is interested in how photographs often not only become a counter memory but actually replace memory (Camera Lucida, Barthes). The 'camera:trapped I and II' series aims to challenge the notion of taking images to preserve memory and to also remove the unconscious desires of capturing the 'ideal' photograph. By removing the element of a view finder and also relying on the motion sensor to capture organic snapshots of daily life I aim to establish a new form of image making that offers a 'true' representation of the natural and urban environment. The captured photographs are often abstracted and rather convey a sense of the time and place it was taken rather than a direct narrative.