The Object of Photography

The Object of Photography 2006 type C colour photographs 600 X 500 mms

'My work investigates the way photography's relationship with subject matter supports the expectation that photography describes - through a physical trace - a "real object" that precedes the image.

Over several years I have systematically re-photographed small fragments of photographs from magazine advertising which resemble "UFO photographs" and presented them using a variety of installational procedures. Here the photographs are presented beside a number of three-dimensional objects: chromed shaving mirrors, glass and metal plates, along with intangible shapes made from projected light and shadows.

These round objects and images recall the frequent forgery of UFO documentary photography in which shiny airborne objects are sometimes used to create blurry circular shapes on film. The mirrors, plates, their shadows and reflections, also evoke the displacement of desire through the allure of luxury consumer goods. They "earth" the photographic imagery, sharing their correlation of shape, and representing the fact of their banal materiality to the irony of spectacular commodity. Like all objects they lack, in metal and glass, the vista of substantiality that is the promise of the image.'