One of the diverse aspects that I am investigating about photography is the intention to give relevance (through negation) to a scene by hiding it (knowing that it is there).
An initial phase of these project the scene photographed is made visually inaccessible due to a neutral plane of paint (the middle grey used as a photographic reference) applied to one area of the Plexiglas in the photograph’s frame. The frame allows just enough space between the Plexiglas and the photograph (2 cm.) in order to see -or suspect- that the image is complete, but it cannot be visualized in its entirety.
The next phases of this project which is still in progress, I work with the action of manipulating (direct) photography by folding, creasing the photo paper according to each image using simple, geometric forms.
I take the photograph’s primary indexical concept and occult the “principal” information, the photograph’s motif.
Questioning documentary objectivity presumes deconstructing an image’s supposed “innocence” in the sense that the ethical complicity of the gaze is always involved. It is to cover up evidence. We know that the image is there, behind, intact. Covering or hiding it means impeding that any other might follow the traces of what was there or has taken place.
The image’s initial beauty combines the sublimity of landscape with abstract painting’s perfectionist tradition, but there is also a brief but substantial dislocation that filters between what is hidden and yet invites suspicion or spying.
Events and natural landscapes as a space for synthesis.
I work with images of specific events that take place in natural settings. These events left profound marks on the lives of people involved and/or on those closest to them.
See full project at: www.anankeasseff.com
