“The taradiddle reveals the world as constructed by the camera. And in being manufactured by the camera it is inevitably a kind of white lie. There’s no history, there’s no context, no truth in the actual picture. Rather a semblance of such — there is an existential truth in the collective body of work.” – Charles H. Traub
Twenty years ago Charles H. Traub abandoned all pretense of trying to find specific themes and subjects in his photographic wanderings other than to make ‘Taradiddles’, embracing fully the digital image which is always questioned for its inherent potential for distortion. Ironically, the witty and sardonic juxtaposition of Traub’s images, are only a matter of framing his discoveries – here, there and everywhere.
This volume is a collection of trifles that become matters of remarkable social commentary when Traub photographs them – “For me, serendipity, coincidence and chance are more interesting than any preconceived construct of our human encounters.” In a hundred plus images Traub seems to have captured the common incongruities of a global society. Traub took these pictures in cities around the world: Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Rome, Tunis, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Santo Domingo, to name a few places.
“What unites Traub’s pictures here? They are all in one way or another about photography. They may even amount to a commentary upon photography as a phenomenon of daily life. Photography as something we do daily, and photographs as things we encounter daily, often by chance. To this extent at least, these are meta-photographs.“ —David Campany, from the introduction to Taradiddle.
“The world is more improbable and stranger than anything I could contrive.”
“Restless and inquisitive, Traub photographs the world with humor, clarity, and pathos. A taradiddle may be a childish lie, or pretentious nonsense, but Traub’s own work is anything but. Taradiddle is a poignant and pointed work that tells unsettling and unexpected truths about our world.” —Adam Bell, critic / photographer, Brooklyn Rail.
