Forest for the Trees

The half-ass nature of posting recently is a result of Roula and I collaborating on an exhibition that opens this weekend at MKG127 in Toronto. 

Hans-Peter Feldmann looms large over the show. There is a deliberate re-make of one of his works, a completely inadvertent remake of another, and three works involving found photography.  The exhibition also includes three books, though two of them are represented as videos.

The found photography of the third video, though, owes more to a Meg Cranston work that I once exhibited when I worked at Mercer Union. She presented vernacular photography as a slide show, with bean bag chairs. The hundred or so dog portraits projected in the darkened space were not taken by her, or by a professional photographer, but by staff at a local shelter with neither the time, nor the training or equipment to perfect their pictures. 

But they did have the knowledge that a particular type of photograph helped the dog’s chances of being adopted. Pictures of dogs in cages didn’t go over well. Growling or looking angry, obviously was to be avoided. Or mangey. Give the dog a toy to play with and he’s more likely to become someone’s pet, they learned. Place her in front of a tree or some flowers and the dog’s chances increase, also. 

So the show became a loving testament to amateur photography, with serious life or death consequences. The photographs were only a month old - as I callously told the Globe and Mail at the time - but many of the dogs pictured were probably already dead. 

Our video features five hundred or so online images collected since 2012, accompanied by a 3000 word text about pareidolia. 

It’s life and death only in historical, evolutionary terms. As Carl Sagan explained “Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper.”

The video is called Forest For the Trees and is the third of the three USB sticks pictured above. The exhibition is title A IS FOR APPLE, and runs from September 13th to October 11th. For more information, visit the MKG127 website, here.