Viewing Distance 1996
It’s a pastoral setting, light filtering through the trees, figures silhouetted. Narratives are suggested, signs of communication are strong.
Four large black and white photographs, reminiscent of ‘snaps’ from a family outing, but the site of the gallery and the scale of the photographs is however very different to that of the album.
The final prints were pasted directly onto the surface of the gallery wall.
Viewing Distance was made specifically for Newlyn Orion Gallery, one print pasted onto each of the four gallery walls. To see each print, the viewer had to navigate the gallery space, unable to view all four prints at one glance. These photographs were taken within moments of each other and look onto a scene of father and son looking through the fence at the deer beyond.
The fence in the image keeps apart the animals from the humans, however both parties appear to be curious of the other. As the viewer moves closer to the photograph, the substance of the fence breaks down, the image disintegrates because the 35 mm negatives are enlarged to the limits of the process, the grain structure of the film fights with recognition of what was photographed.
“There is a quiet contentedness about the relations within and beyond the prints… perhaps it is the fathers’ relation to the child, or the photographers’ relation to the subject, the animals to the fence, the photographs to the space etc. etc. These complex and shifting positions are for the viewer to negotiate, imagining that the ‘subject matter’ is lacking predatory instinct, the only thing being shot here is the camera.” Press release