“One must distrust the almost-the-same . . . , the practically identical, the approximate, the or-even, all surrogates, and all patchwork. The differences can be small, but they can lead to radically different consequences, like a railroad’s switch points, one track leading, for example, through night and fog to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the extermination camp, another to Auschwitz-Monowitz, the industrial plant” -Primo Levi, Periodic Table
Begun in 2009, these 48 photographs installed in grids are aesthetically reminiscent of Suprematist paintings, yet operate in a fashion similar to experimental film stills. The work itself is created through the rephotographing of a series of performative interventions made directly on photographs. Conceptually, Periodic Table (aka Drowning) explores the camera’s abilities to create and shift meanings while also producing abstracted images from within its own insular world of self-generated photographs that serve as archival proof of past gestures.
