“Smaller Than Small and Bigger Than Big”
A group of twenty gelatin silver prints in editions of twenty plus proofs, signed and numbered,on 20 x 16 inch paper. Each photograph has been printed and archivally processed by the artist.
Small objects (band-aids, lollipops, razor blades, tools, etc.) have been photographed in large format with austere side lighting. The negatives are altered by hand in the ground area to produce an unusual black, without dimension, in the print. These works use traditional still life as a foundation, but elaborate the objects to the state of an icon or symbol.
“This photographic work is the visual expression of an identification with small objects, as a mediation between containment and liberation, compression and expansion.” John Back
The idea derives from a game played by Anna Wulf in The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing:
Think about the smallest objects in the room. Then let the mind spred out to take in the house, the city, the country, the continent, while still holding the small original details in place, until thinks Anna Wulf, “The point is reached where I moved out in space, and watched the world in a sunlit ball in the sky, turning and rolling beneath me.” What she wanted was “a simultaneous knowledge of vastness and of smallness.”
copyright all images John Back
