HARLEY WEIR
PAINTINGS
http://www.harleyweir.com/
http://harleyweir.tumblr.com/
Forging a new path is Paintings, set to be published in August by “artist-run publisher and design studio” Loose Joints. Across 152 pages and 90 colour plates in an edition of 1000, the flexi bound embossed hardcover removes the living, breathing subject, allowing Harley to shrug off the label of portrait photographer and in the process remove the medium’s concerns of “trust, power and permission”.
The result is a three year-long “surface study” practise, intentionally devoid of context and place in a search for a “pure” image by the photographer. “With each picture made according to a specific set of rules and criteria, Weir attempts to expunge herself from the act of image-making, and encounter photography as a immediate, indulging process,” Loose Joints explains. ”These images are nevertheless underscored by a tension palpable throughout Weir’s output — the transgressing of surfaces and boundaries, the uneasy relationship between camera and subject, and the inevitable constraints of choice and power that hover around the frame of a photograph. In this sense, these images can be thought of as both a liberation from and a mirror to Weir’s diverse output in fashion, editorial and portraiture photography.”
