installation : cameraobjects, photographs, curtains 2021
This series of photographic works is based on the principle of the pinhole camera – it consists in semi-figural sculptural objects that are equipped with pinhole camera viewfinders and loaded with flat BW negatives, on which they record their environment.
Cameraobjects – potential elements of a costume – are inspired by ancient paintings, such as the scene from the Athenian amphora depicting Achilles killing Penthesilee (ca. 540-530 BC)
Dorota Walentynowicz’s camera-objects, operating in analogous way, permit us to analyse the role that photography plays today, in the age of digital images, in sustaining the hegemony of visuality and using it for supervision. The majority of modern cameras only offer built-in programmes that permit an optimal and predictable result, however, they dictate us the manner of shooting. In contrast, the She-camera objects, like the Medusas, are unashamedly imperfect and fragile, just as much as the photographs they take. However, the apparent weakness of the materials and the performance, which is unsuitable by today’s standards, allow for a specific kind of resistance to the technologically formatted tools of power. The camera-objects can thus function as independent entities, not subject to classification and recognition and therefore immune to capture, while at the same time playing the role of a prosthesis, mask or, even, armour, co-operating closely with the photographic subject as a co-shared organism. (Anna Ciabach)
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