photographs from the series Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing
Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing was evolved of fragments and details of portrait paintings I have photographed in a number of museums and private collections within the last few years. The starting point for the project was my interest in museum and archive and it developed gradually while completing the work Imaginary Homecoming (1991-1996).
Within museum photography, dramatic use of light and shade were avoided; rather, light was used to give uniformity to a series, regardless of difference of photographed objects. My emphasis, however, is not placed on the relation of the original and copy, a ‘rhetoric of substitution´, but drawing attention to the photographic process itself, complexity of gaze, to convey arresting sense of presence, to evoke an exalted attention. With intensive raking light I wish to bring to our attention the surface of the painting, with its shiny areas, its hidden colours and its craquelure.
The resulting photographic portraits of Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing defy the accepted standards of a well-made photo. The daylight is reflected on the surface of the painting, overexposing certain parts of the image, obliterating others in darkness. The series questions the relationship between the portrait, the portrayed, and the photograph of the portrait, and the way in which the employed mediums influence our perception of them as an “image”.
In the photographs seen in Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing the original focus of the painting, a face, seem to hover behind, between and beyond the material layers of the painting. Looking at paintings from unusual angles evokes in the viewer the sense of vulnerability emerged from the tension between a moment and permanence, a flash of light and centuries old patina.
Photography´s capacity to register reflections is actually its singular gift. What other medium deals so expressively with the play of light and shadow? Furthermore, by veiling the faces in light, the photograph actually reinvests them with mystery. In the face of their own reality, these pictures remain blind, just as at the same time they open our eyes to the ‘destiny´ of the sitters. The actuality of the past is thematized in the series of Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing. I fetch my portraits through the past of their painted existence and the actuality of the photographs materializes them as transitory bodies. (via)
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