Untitled Funerals
2022. 9
Miniature Installation, Digital photographs, interactive website
Installation dimension variable: 10*30*12mm/piece
This work seeks to explore the value of photographs in the context of contemporary mass media. It is an installation featuring miniature gravestones, each with a QR code. Through this, I aimed to create a cemetery for the forgotten and overlooked photographs in my album, which is filled with tens of thousands of images. In today's society, where camera equipment is widely accessible, photographs are readily available to almost everyone. At the same time, the strong connection between mass media and imagery has become a driving force, leading people to produce massive quantities of photos every day. This phenomenon has become both a universal and personal experience.
A funeral ceremony was created for the forgotten pictures on my iCloud by screenshotting them and digitally manipulating a series of portraits of people wearing black clothes onto these screenshots. This visual approach may evoke the style of Magritte but with a contemporary twist. The tiny portraits floating on the images create a ghost-like atmosphere, with varying levels of transparency to symbolize the gradual death of these photos.
The contents of these photos represent the repetitive images I most often take in daily life, such as meals, selfies, sunsets, trips, and exhibitions. Finally, inspired by an online memorial service I attended during the COVID lockdown, I created a digital obituary for each photo, which was printed on a miniature gravestone in the form of a QR code, allowing the audience to interact with it. This installation invites the audience to rethink the act of taking photos.
Funerals for photographs: Interactive online ceremony invitations
Link to screen recordings: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9tQSLCkgFxY9WWxpOagicFPAr0C6D-tN