‘.. .. 86’
The work ‘.. .. 86’ combines primary and secondary imagery in experimental practice. Through c-type printed computer screen grabs, appropriated promotional photographs and theoretical text, the work fantasises ownership, analysing the fetishisation of objects, and critiques consumer culture.
Exploring advertising imagery, it considers the gaps between printed pages or backlit screens, amalgamating the format of conventional book pages into one spread. When presented in continuation, as can be found on my website, the interaction is forced, necessitating the viewer to scroll through the piece like a bespoke webpage that neither tells a story, nor sells a product.
‘.. .. 86’ borrows text from David Bate’s book ‘Photography: The Key Concepts’ (2009), and images from Paterson’s 1979 publications ‘The Book of the Darkroom’ and ‘The Book of Photography’, with re-workings from Paterson’s website: patersonphotographic.com.
“We are asked to fall in love with an object through its image. Through its image we are infatuated. Because of this image on the printed page, or the backlit screen, we devote our desire. Our desire culminated through accumulated digits and paper notes. With no means of measurement, the object in the picture is dis-embodied, and it can become as large or small as the viewer imagines it to be in their mind. But their mind is emptied, then filled with desire. The object could be overwhelmingly fulfilling, or in fact, possess all the drama of a kitchen sink. Instead we find another way to subside our desire. In a photograph I can have this or that object, in fact, every object. We know that satisfaction is always short-lived; desire is never fulfilled. It is hard to admit that objects do not fulfil desire, they only temporarily subjugate it.”
This text piece interlaces my words with those of the writer and artist David Bate, from his book ‘Photography: The Key Concepts’, chapter 6: ‘The Rhetoric of Still Life’.
Bate, D. (2009). ‘Photography: The Key Concepts’. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
