Photography as the detritus of human existence
The artist acknowledges that the self-portrait photograph is situated within a digital age, where the photograph is the by-product of human existence due to the increasing accessibility of the camera and humanity's instinct to self-surveil through photography. As a result of the majority of humanity consuming and generating this mass accumulation of documentary self-portrait photography online, self-portrait photography has become over-produced fragments of detritus that are void of meaning and value and fail to fulfill the principle of the photograph as a representational medium.
This futile overproduction of self-portrait photography becomes synonymous with human identity and therefore the decline in the meaning and visibility of the self-portrait contributes to the abstraction of the human identity which suggests how images stand in for and imply the presence of humans.
Each work depicts partially visible digital self-portraits which illustrate subtle variation in the artist’s facial and bodily expression which as a series of sequential frames that visually and physically represent the large quantity of self-surveillant self-portrait photographs that overpopulate online platforms.
Through a range of material exploration, notably employing acetate transfers, acetate, acrylic, gel wax, CRT TV’s, water, foam board, and wall fragments, the artist situates their own digital output of self-portrait imagery within these material contexts to physicalise the immaterial production of self-portraits.
The use of folding, tearing, digitally adding horizontal grain, and the monochrome colouring of the images harks back to pre-internet processes of physical image production and manipulation whilst visually commenting on the current overproduction of self-portrait photography on social media. These digital and material manipulation processes obscure the visibility of the self-portrait and render it as useless which emulates the oversaturation of digital imagery and self-portrait photography online.
The artists’ decision to title the constituent works as numbered pieces of ‘DETRITUS’ evermore confirms the degradation and deflating value of the photograph into a meaningless visual symbol as a reflection of the role of the self-portrait photograph in digital contemporary society.
