December 4-5, 2021
The White Album
Interactive Art Experiences at The Lyceum Gallery
February 4 and 5, 2021
A Camera | A Photo Album | An Armchair |
A Typewriter | An Artist | Twelve Stories |
All that is missing, is you.
Opening Reception December 3 from 6-8 pm
The White Album is an extraordinary analogue photography and new performance artwork which re-imagines the traditional gallery experience by creating an intimate exchange between artist and visitor through the lens of a nostalgic photo album. Seated in an armchair alone in the gallery, the visitor becomes part of the performance, visible to the public in the street-facing windows. The artist presents the visitor with a large white photo album consisting of eighty photographs. The visitor is encouraged to ask about the story of up to twelve images, corresponding to the length of a roll of medium format film. For each request, the artist responds by telling the story of the work in question. An intimate dialogue develops between them, designed to draw the visitor deeply into the artist’s work. As each story is told, the artist simultaneously typewrites it onto the backing paper of a roll of 120 format film, the same type used to create the images in the photo album.
The 80 images collected in the The White Album were taken by photographer Martin Reis over 25 years from 1994-2019. They are not presented in chronological order, but instead are carefully sequenced to tell short stories arranged into pairs or sets of three or four. Each photo is numbered and referenced onto the film backing paper where the stories are recorded by the artist on the typewriter as they are told to the visitor. At the end of the performance, the typed stories are rolled back onto a film spool, capturing the memory of the shared experience for the visitor to keep.
Through this work, the fleeting aspects of everyday modern life, emphasized by disposable image making and social media’s vanishing forms of storytelling, are reversed into a non-virtual permanence. The unique character of each element is underscored and explored. The stories told here may not all be entirely true. Memory fades and changes over time. Each photograph a photographer takes captures a part of his soul and sometimes the heart does not wish to remember everything that’s there. Sometimes, it simply choses to forget or aberrate the details to complete a more idealized version…but that is another story.
Artist Statement
The White Album reimagines the traditional way of exhibiting analog photographic work by creating an intimate and interactive experience between artist and gallery visitor through the lens of a nostalgic photo album. Seated in an armchair, the visitor alone with the artist in the gallery, becomes part of the performance visible to the public in the street facing gallery window. An intimate dialogue between them is developed, which is designed to draw the visitor deeply into the artists’ work. One object (the photo album), one visitor & one artist is combined into a singular performance, conversation and experience. The unique character of each element is underscored and explored. The fleeting aspect of everyday life, emphasized by disposable image making and social medias’ vanishing forms of storytelling are reversed into a new non-virtual permanence. This is achieved by the artist not only telling the story behind his images to the visitor, but simultaneously recording them in typewritten form onto film backing paper, the media used to record the images. The visitor at the end of the performance retains a permanent record of the shared experience with the artist and the memory of the images they saw and requested the story thereof.
The 80 images collected in the The White Album were taken over 25 years by the artist from (1994-2019) and are not in chronological order, but instead are carefully sequenced to tell short stories arranging them into pairs, and sets of three or four. Each photo is numbered and referenced on the film backing paper as each story is recorded by the artist on the typewriter and told to the visitor.
The stories may not all be entirely true. Memory fades and changes over time. But each photograph a photographer takes, also takes a part of his soul. And sometimes the heart does not wish to remember everything, so it simply choses to forget or change the details, and replace it with a more beautiful version. But that is another story.
