"
To Paris with Love is a site specific installation of 130 Polaroid negatives representing the total number of deaths in the recent Paris attacks, as well as the 12 killed in the
Charlie Hebdo massacre, plus 4 Jewish hostages that were murdered during the siege at a Hyper Cacher supermarket in s suburb of Paris. The large scale, grey negative is evocative of a headstone, while Polaroid's matte patina echoes the lichen of the stone's
physical surface. The empty rectangle stands for the absence of the individual. In photography, a traditional portrait includes the person's head and shoulder, a visual presence. Here it is absent.
Pliny the Elder, in his
Natural History (ca. 77-79 CE) relates the myth of art's origin in a fable about the daughter of Butudes, a Greek potter from Corinth. She drew the outlined profile of her lover's shadow as it was projected on the wall by a lamp, just before he left for battle, and which her father made into a relief sculpture. Thus, before the real shadow departs with its owner it offers the young woman an image from which to construct a representation of her beloved, which she fixes on the wall for all time…" -
Ellen Carey
www.1814mag.com
