(2 Identical Silver Gelatin Prints, 1 stained), 2013
Diptych, 2 Silver Gelatin Prints
19.5 x 20.5 inches each
I discovered that one of the 2 silver prints that I produced in the early 2000s had manifested some sort of deteriorating stain a decade later. There were identical in every other way. The stain could almost be read as forming a part of the depictive information of the image, but clearly wasn’t. The pairing and framing together of these two prints encourages a juxtaposition whereby the precise nature of the photography’s constituent material, textures, and forms could be profoundly thrown into question: “what are we looking at?”, “what’s happening here? to this print?”, “will both prints eventually deteriorate in the same way?”, “is this concern for the print’s material longevity more important than what’s depicted?”
Coincidentally, the frame itself has shrunk and swelled over time due to varying humidity, and has manifested large cracks at the corners – as if the conceptual import of that which it contains pushes and leaks out. It thus continues to manifest an argument that sees photography in perpetual dynamic balance of being in 2 simultaneous states: An image that refers to elsewhere at another time, and a thing, an object that is present yet continually restates its unstable mutability.