Stills

About

Stills is a photography ‘installation' considering the possibilities and limitations of the still image within photography and tattoo art. Multiple layers are at work to challenge common assumptions on imagery and representation and to suggest a rethinking of the subject of the image. People who use their bodies as the most valuable of their diaries discuss the stories behind their tattoos in a portraiture sitting that becomes a journey within time and emotions. Behind every facial and body position photographed lays the complex architecture of events and feelings of a very personal story. But paradoxically, these cannot possibly be reduced to a single comprehensive image at the service of the viewer. The photographs, as the tattoos here, are not aspiring to be clear statements or disclosures, but rather represent small windows into the vast world of human life. The strong analogy between tattoo and photograph then is not only due to the practical element of ink entering the skin and light entering the film and paper, but also to the complexity of representation hidden behind the ‘deceptive' still image. The promise of a grand and ultimate meaning remains illusionary, ungraspable for the general viewer who is left to wonder on those frozen expressions of individuality.