A McDonald's
drive-thru attendant, a butcher slaughtering a whole pig, a guard on night
duty, a naked homeless man on a busy sidewalk, someone roasting a pig. These
things may seem to be disconnected and random, but some of these things are the
ones you simply pass by without a thought when you go outside. Javier and
Kristoff's photographs in this exhibit will make you stop and think of subjects
that would otherwise be a mere blur in the corner of your eye.
Javier's photographs
are taken with an unaltered film camera, what one would call disposable,
creating the effect that the photo is taken all of a sudden from a long time
ago. Each series of photos are then lined in frames, with little to no theme
connecting each of them, making us find the meaning of such fleeting moments as
they are shown frozen in time.
Kristoff then adds to
the emphasis of the unassuming with his photographs of scenes from construction
sites, throwing in a few pieces of construction material to add to the idea.
His contributions are less compared to Javier's, but their showcase adorns the
walls and not much else, so it's no loss if you missed something while
perusing, the works adding only a bit to the otherwise bleak exhibit space
exemplifies the idea.
It's this simplicity
that brings us to why the exhibit is called Incognito Field. Incognito
in today's terminology is connected more to Google Chrome, where the pages you
visit are not saved in the browser's histor, but it also related to the notion
of surveillance, that of being able to oversee everything without them knowing
it. Javier and Kristoff shot, developed, printed and framed things you wouldn't
bother looking at for more than a few seconds, and turned them into objects of
interest, but this is not about photography, it's about a wider-angled lens,
where the majority of its scope shows things that are similar in this exhibit,
and the people are ready to watch them.
Any flat image
becomes interesting when you pin it to the wall or flash it on the screen. Incognito
Field lets us be voyeurs, even just for a while.
Incognito Field is on exhibit at Post Gallery, Cubao Expo, Quezon City from February 27 to April 9
Incognito Field is on exhibit at Post Gallery, Cubao Expo, Quezon City from February 27 to April 9
