ways of framing
“Everyone is looking at pictures, but in such different ways, and with such varying degrees of intensity, that one begins to doubt whether or not they are actually doing the same thing. Ultimately, there are two types of viewers: those in the picture and ourselves.”
We don’t normally go to an exhibition to look at the people there, especially not to observe people who are merely looking at pictures – a situation in which we soon become entangled in a kind of tautology of their gaze being within our gaze.
One can say that in the museum, a kind of theatre is being performed, in which each of the visitors has its own role. The project thereby approaches photography as an "intellectual process" uses the camera as a tool to arrive at a better understanding of ways of seeing and to reflect on the routines of modern urban living.
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Step 1: In the Museum
What are the viewers actually doing when they are looking at the paintings? Are they looking for information, or is their gaze simply resting, without focusing on anything?
I intend to unravel the many layers of observation and to assess the participant’s gaze by first capturing visitors and viewers in carefully curated museum spaces – photographing the art and visitors viewing it and the viewer observing other audiences.
People in the painting who take no notice of those observing them, are completely absorbed in their own world.
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Step 2: Outside of the Museum
How do we actively frame and navigate public spaces?
The city functions as a museum or playground backdrop for daily urban participants. In the second part of the project, I want to work with distance, to keep an open and innocent gaze, and to explore personal narratives of city-dwellers as restless wanderers.
Through a series of a diptych, the pairings interrogate the role of technology and other tools of framing like smartphones and cameras.
