Preview The Object of Photography
Three photographers question the very nature of photography
Preview: The Object of Photography
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We all like taking photographs. We don’t want to forget that day we went to Chester Zoo. Or how we partied at Mark’s 21st. We take photos of our friends and family, and post all our happy memories on Facebook. But, if you’re artist Joe Mawson, you make photographs of high-profile disasters and hang them proudly in an art gallery.
Mawson’s work is far from voyeuristic. In a world where, when disaster strikes, it takes seconds for the graphic footage to appear on YouTube, Mawson’s considered photographs recreating the aftermath of scenes from the 2001 Selby Rail Crash, or the 1988 Lockerbie air crash - devoid of replica victims - are eerily calm and free from sensationalism.
In our media-saturated world, it’s refreshing. Mawson, 25, spends weeks painstakingly making the detailed small-scale scenes, which he then photographs in ultra-vivid saturated colour. The finished product looks both fake and hyper-real and leaves you questioning the nature and exploitation of human tragedy.
Mawson joins three other artists, Ignaz Cassar, Hondartza Fraga and Andrew Warstat, in a critique of the meaning of photography and the way we interpret what we see. Between them, the artists ask what a photograph might mean if it cannot be seen and playfully question the power and authority we give to science. We get television static, blown up and enhanced so that they resemble images of outer space, photographic negatives and Yorkshire landscapes, and doctored stills from an early Laurel and Hardy film, where Laurel just misses being hit by a streetcar. It sounds disastrous, but it’s really not…
Until June 19, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Parkinson Building, University Of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, LS2 9JT, 0113 343 2777, Mon-Fri 10-5pm, free
SH
Posted on Friday 17th April 2009
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