Friday, November 23, 2012

Desktops

Portraiture need not be straight headshots, in any age. As a symbol of a particular person, a straight headshot certainly gets the job done, but as many artists and photographers have found, it is not the only method. A person can be represented in a myriad of ways, from the possessions they have, to the things they do, to more abstract notions like how they feel or what they desire. In the Digital Age, these symbols increased dramatically; for every real world object or action there seems to be a digital equivalent. Our workspaces change, our ways of working change.


In my series of Desktop, I present portraits of six anonymous individuals with nothing more than the desktop environment on their screens. The monitor acts as a frame. In one of these portraits, the person included the conversation I had with them requesting a screenshot, which was not what I quite intended but becomes a kind of “photo bomb” as it might be called in a traditional portrait.