Seeing things far off as a blur and things nearby clearly
We know it’s a cliché, but we forget that clichés are more often lazy thoughts than lazy phrases
The whole point of journalism is to walk the line between what is familiar to readers, viewers or listeners and what is new (or ‘the news’). The journalistic code demands a certain degree of stability: stability provided by familiar foundations, words, angles, topics.
The only thing you can do is to keep looking, in the knowledge that what you see is not what you see. Even the territory is not the territory.
With the series Myopia I show that we do not just read pictures but there are rules and codes. And these rules affect our look at the world around us and also our image of places we have never been before.
The journalistic code demands a certain degree of stability: stability provided by familiar foundations, words, angles, topics. We also use our memory to interpret images, in search of recognition. So we continue to build on what we know and recognize the image which leaving you stuck in the cliché.
With my serie Myopia I comment on this. I play a game with the codes used to represent Africa in the European media. I want to make the viewer aware of these codes so you can see that we build on the cliché that we know of Africa. The series tells nothing about Africa, but about Europe’s way of seeing
The publication contains a fragmentary collection of 3 types of images; the tourist image, the journalistic image and the artistic image of Africa. The book is printed with 3 different techniques on 3 different types of papers which each refer to corresponding media types (travel brochures, newspaper, art book).
