E.I. Totem LDN_1
Photograph
E.I. Totem LDN_1
2016
E-ink screen in acrylic frame
Frame: 90 × 20 × 3 cm (35 7/16 × 7 7/8 × 1 3/16 in.)
Other (plinth): 300 × 200 × 500 cm (118 1/8 × 78 3/4 × 196 7/8 in.)
Purchase with funds provided by Susan and Nick Robfogel, 2018
2018.0041.0001
Inscriptions [no inscription]
TextIn his recent work, Antony Cairns employs a mash-up of historical photographic procedures: he exposes 35mm film negatives, partially develops and solarizes them (techniques native to gelatin silver processing), and then makes contact prints (common to salted paper and albumen silver printing) on metal (as daguerreotypes and tintypes are) or paper. He then transposes the photographs, which portray urban spaces haunted by the past and pregnant with hidden meaning, onto recycled e-readers. The electronically inked screens encapsulated in the final “totems” emphasize digital photography’s dependence on apparatuses with mass and volume to make its images visible.
