EVA PETRIC
SHADOWS&PUPPETS - THE LANGUAGE OF E@MOTION RE-ACTING
Shadows&Puppets - The language of E@motion RE-Acting. Artist’s book, 2010, edition of 27, 29 x 22 x 13 cm, 8 kg, 700+ pages, two pockets with texts, 161 black and white analog photographs, 187 color photographs, 161 color and black and white superimposed photographs – visual aphorisms, pH scale of E@motion reacting, leporello of images daring to re-pick the apple, little girl golden yellow trail story and young boy email story (both echoed in the video "Circling")
The purpose of this artist’s book is to explore the language of emotions by endeavoring to visualize feelings on feeling - the feeling about feeling emotions rather than merely the visualization of emotions themselves. Emotions nowadays are often replaced by easily attainable cliches, instantly expressed visually by means of color photographs. Looking into what emotions are, I am most interested in all the possible ways of conveying them through photography. To explore them in this particular book I have constructed emotional landscapes - color staged photographs that have been developed through a performance-like ritual aimed at overcoming the overall present cliches and reaching for the emotions buried underneath. By accentuating them and at the same time counteracting them with echoes of cliches in the form of b&w photos of shadows, my aim was to create visual aphorisms - to overturn the cliche and with a b&w shadow functioning as a catalyst induce, or re-induce in viewers a real emotion.
The book is a hybrid by its content as well as its form. It is a hybrid of a literary story, switching between a fairytale and a contemporary e-mail dairy. The text itself is a hybrid between image and sentences, laid out on paper of different colors and textures in ways where sentences form visual images. With the interplay of images printed on different materials (paper and transparent sheets) and in different saturation, from color to black and white, and to black and white superimposed on color, and at the same time depicting figures in their material forms of bodies as well as in their immaterial forms as shadows, the book enables viewers new perspectives on the text and on their perception of the story. The mutual working of different textures, gradations and forms of the visual hopefully enables the viewer to see through the cliche represented by color-saturated images and into real emotion hidden within it. By applying series of shadow images from my book Gr@y matter - the language of shadows to the color images (the character of my color staged photographs is a puppet, unaware of its shadow - the real emotion which pulls the strings of the character making it a puppet), shadows act as catalysts enabling reactions between the image and the viewer to occur. At the point of fusion, narratives overlap, a new dimension arises, relieving the state where the shadow acquires characteristics of the body, appearing fleshier, and the body acquires characteristics of the shadow, appearing more ephemeral.
The purpose of this artist’s book is to explore the language of emotions by endeavoring to visualize feelings on feeling - the feeling about feeling emotions rather than merely the visualization of emotions themselves. Emotions nowadays are often replaced by easily attainable cliches, instantly expressed visually by means of color photographs. Looking into what emotions are, I am most interested in all the possible ways of conveying them through photography. To explore them in this particular book I have constructed emotional landscapes - color staged photographs that have been developed through a performance-like ritual aimed at overcoming the overall present cliches and reaching for the emotions buried underneath. By accentuating them and at the same time counteracting them with echoes of cliches in the form of b&w photos of shadows, my aim was to create visual aphorisms - to overturn the cliche and with a b&w shadow functioning as a catalyst induce, or re-induce in viewers a real emotion.
The book is a hybrid by its content as well as its form. It is a hybrid of a literary story, switching between a fairytale and a contemporary e-mail dairy. The text itself is a hybrid between image and sentences, laid out on paper of different colors and textures in ways where sentences form visual images. With the interplay of images printed on different materials (paper and transparent sheets) and in different saturation, from color to black and white, and to black and white superimposed on color, and at the same time depicting figures in their material forms of bodies as well as in their immaterial forms as shadows, the book enables viewers new perspectives on the text and on their perception of the story. The mutual working of different textures, gradations and forms of the visual hopefully enables the viewer to see through the cliche represented by color-saturated images and into real emotion hidden within it. By applying series of shadow images from my book Gr@y matter - the language of shadows to the color images (the character of my color staged photographs is a puppet, unaware of its shadow - the real emotion which pulls the strings of the character making it a puppet), shadows act as catalysts enabling reactions between the image and the viewer to occur. At the point of fusion, narratives overlap, a new dimension arises, relieving the state where the shadow acquires characteristics of the body, appearing fleshier, and the body acquires characteristics of the shadow, appearing more ephemeral.