All things, passing - installation views

All things, passing (2015 - 2022) is a conceptual work about fandom, desire, and hopes. It examines the photographic medium as a means of display and representation and considers its relation to reality, the unobtainable, and death. I have been working on the body of work since 2015 and it has been shown in Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki, Finland. In 2022 I will be working on new images and object installations that have not been shown before.

Comprising numerous photographs, pieces of text, and partially ready-made-object installations, it is a result of an unending process—images are a collection where something is always missing. The photographs are reproductions of documentary images from magazines and books, of which the main character, John Lennon, has been wholly or partially removed by digital image processing. The texts in the body of work describe a memory, and like a photograph, engender a theoretical perspective of the past, and reflect my relationship to John. The work softly persuades the viewer to contemplate the potential and importance of forgetting and discontinuous recollection.

 All things, passing thematises John Lennon’s absence: he is no longer photographable. The images raise the question of the existence of an aura—of energy around a living being. Can this be detected from a picture, even if Lennon’s image has been removed from the composition? I take the imagery of Lennon for my sole ownership by removing him from the gaze of others. Aggressively counteracting photography’s normative role of remembrance, this additionally demonstrates an act of jealous possession. Though incomparable to the ultimate violence committed, I suggest parallels to an act of murder and this artistic gesture of erasure. In addition to deleting the personhood of the artist, there are few clues or visual traces of the removal left in the work. Here the documentary form is explicitly stretched, processed and digitally reconstructed—further revealing how today’s photo creator can easily create her worldview and history.

In All things, passing, the past is transformed and becomes more fluid. The subject of the original photographs is deceased, and the iconic locations are slowly losing their once “self-evident” significance. In the end, feelings and memories fade, disappear, or are forgotten—obscured by each new coating of everyday life. The work combines fundamental questions regarding the power of photography to immortalise and document—while simultaneously questioning what lies beyond the frame. 

All things, passing - pigment prints (selection of approx. 90 pictures)