The scene is kept in a state somewhere between appearance and
disappearance. Defined depth of field and sharpness – essentially, the
depiction of a specific moment - no longer exist in your pictures. Are you questioning the very fundamentals of the photographic
image?
What I am questioning is the generalized claim that photography is
factual truth. My work deals with the idea that initially “reality” is
neither graspable nor comprehensible, but constitutes a bizarre passage
of non-knowledge to knowledge, a paradoxical coexistence of sense and
non-sense. My work functions as a renegotiation of this paradox. The
incomplete images test the beholder, challenging him to grasp the
physical world he inhabits.
The two pictures selected here feature a couple in bed, and a woman
chopping tomatoes on a table. Why did you choose to depict mundane
scenes of the everyday life?
The idea is to transform the preconceived idea of everyday life by
de-contextualizing its banal and trivial dimension - confronting the
familiar with the unknown of the surrounding void. My aim is to
establish a fictional space, to create an uncomfortable tension - a
sense of awkwardness that interrogates what is otherwise taken for
granted.
Trying to look harder and longer does not bring a deeper
understanding, but only a gaze. Are the image’s reluctance to reveal
more, the persistent mystery and tension, an image of the nature of a
photograph - a total enigma, wrapped in an illusion of verisimilitude?
My work dwells on what the perceptual limits of photography are; my
images cross a threshold where the verisimilitude of the medium is
denied by the whiteness. Apparent opaque whites veil figure and ground.
These whites however are a result of physical interventions (the use of a
fog machine), or the excess of light (over-exposure) - the combination
of both, paradoxically, produces the apparent presence of a sort of
uncanny “lightness” and absence of information. This whiteness can be
considered a visual motif, masking and restricting the possibility of a
clear interpretation of the image - the photographic image moves towards
non-indexical media producing a
trompe-l’oeil effect
nevertheless achieved by a photographic process. Today’s digital era has
forced us to completely rethink the notion of photography as synonymous
with reality and engage with the medium on another level.
Limited edition, numbered and signed.