Considerations of vision—of how we look at the world at large, as well as how we customarily employ photography to document and speak to our surroundings—have long been central to my interests within photography. What do we look at photographically, and what do we ignore?
Most recently, I have been looking at the mediation of the camera apparatus itself, separating the viewfinder’s quirks from the world beyond and examining how these glass and plastic forms inform and shape our photographic visions. Histories of looking are embedded in the glass in the form of dust and scratches, etched and painted lines and text discipline and direct our sight. Meant to be looked through, to ostensible scenes beyond, what happens if our vision is arrested at these thresholds?
Verso looks to probe the tension between what conventionally constitutes a picture space and the underlying factors, textual or otherwise, that work to reinforce and define that space. These stark images allow the viewer to glimpse only the backs of photographs—gleaned from my family’s visual history as well as from anonymous, found photographic collections. Hints of text, stamped numbers, tape and glue marks—all relics of a pre-pixel age—invite the viewer to construct their own photographic image on an imagined reverse side.
Meggan Gould
Viewfinder
September 5 – October 14, 2012
M.Žilinskas Art Gallery of the National M.K.Čiurlionis Art Museum
Nepriklausomybės sq. 12,
Kaunas
Lithuania
