“Although much has been written about the demise of analog photography, no one has explored this subtle shift as elegantly as Tacita Dean,” writes Adam Bell on his blog.
In her monograph, FLOH (2001), Dean delicately arranges photographs that she has discovered at flea markets across Europe and America – as, in a sense, a final gesture (or, as Bell calls it, “a beautiful swan song to analog photography”).
Here’s a nice description of FLOH (via photo-eye):
These portraits, holiday snapshots, documents of banal occurrences or spectacular views have all been retrieved and given a new existence. They keep the silence of the flea market; the silence they had when they were found; the silence of the lost object. This, however, is found photography with a twist. In FLOH, it is presented as art: beautifully printed in a linen cover, slipcased volume, and each copy of the book is signed and numbered by the artist. ‘Eventually, Tacita Dean stopped going to flea markets for fear of finding an image that ‘should have been in the book’, but then resolved to believe that there isn’t, and can never be, a final version to this collection. FLOH exists in the continuum and will one day return ownerless and silent to its origins in the flea market.
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
spread from FLOH, 2001
© Tacita Dean / Steidl
As Charlotte Cotton puts it in the Spring ’07 photo-eye Booklist,
There’s a rich heritage of artists assembling found photographs, but Dean does something that is very rare – she makes a departure within the genre… FLOH silently eulogizes upon analogue photography’s magic and random weirdness, they physical sensation of the photographic snap. The artistic force of FLOH is bound up in this particular moment when we can still, just, tell the difference between what we discard with these fragile traces of a richly incoherent and disappearing technology, and the seamless correction of digital media.
Yesterday I discovered a limited edition (and signed) copy of FLOH in a local bookstore in Harvard Square. I couldn’t help myself and bought it.
It’s gorgeous – very quickly becoming one of my favorites on the shelf.
4 Comments
September 3, 2007 – 6:49 pm
this is one of those ideas that everyone could have but only a few can execute like this. would love to have this book.
your remarks concerning analog photography make me giggle though… first because it will never disappear, secondly because even digital photography is analog on it’s root. it’s simply an analog photography where one trades all the qualities of film to satisfy one’s laziness.
i wouldn’t trade a leg for a car.
September 3, 2007 – 8:15 pm
Tomé,
I don’t believe the recent decades’ “shift” in using film means the demise of analog practices in fine art photography. And, certainly, I don’t believe this change will cause the physical medium to completely disappear.
In other words, I agree with your first reason for giggling.
August 24, 2009 – 5:17 pm
I think she is really a great artist!! FLOH represent a fantastic contemporary project in other simple words just divine. Tacita you really are a genius!
October 26, 2009 – 4:46 pm
I simply cant accept that an increase of digital photography will decrease this style of snapshot photography especially by fine artists. Many artists pursue vernacular photography using digital techniques aswell. it is ridiculous doomsaying to suggest such projects are at an end because of the decrease in analogue photography.
in fact i don’t think artists or fine art photographers have departed from analogue at all, it is mainly the commercial artist and the amateur who have made that migration. but even so i think people tend to over romanticize the qualities of analogue rather than embracing new possibilities of the digital photograph.
p.s. i do love this piece though, there are some beautiful pictures in it
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