Cabinets

Use a camera to photograph a cabinet.

Both cameras and cabinets are enclosures, spaces for collecting and storing memories. A chest of drawers, a camera body; the human is also a form of enclosure. These cabinets are in white space allowing us to imagine the potential environments they could go, the meaning of their design, and what kind of life they might represent. The different cabinets could be holders of different lives. It seems fitting that their sizes and shapes are relatable to bodies. A style of living emanates from the object and spreads to the apartment. It is mirrored in the minds, postures and clothes of the inhabitants. It is mirrored in the aspirations for the kids.

Like the layout on the page the cabinet creates a grid of spaces and divisions, what can be fitted inside is determined by sizes of compartments. Cabinets and layouts become framing systems for directing attention, a form of authority. The cabinets are empty so could be filled up, they can be opened and closed, there is potential to hide and potential to display.

Carrying a camera is a way of shaping space, merging inner structures and fantasies with reality. A photograph is a document of what kind of image someone wanted to make and that can be quite revealing. Conventions and styles are often unconsciously mimicked, making photographic sense, taking part in various shared fantasies. Its hard to control exactly what kind of images you are making, they often come out as reductive compartmentalised versions of reality and can feel very embarrassing. Certain ways of cropping and certain relationships within a photographic image become painful and shameful.

Through the structure of images lots of seemingly unrelated things can be made into a flattened coherent whole. It is a way of making sense that is somehow related to growing up, to becoming “someone”, the transformation out of boundless infancy into directed role fulfilment. Photography and adulthood could be seen as image making performances. It seems impossible to get it right, there is always a sense that a higher authority would be able to see through the performance, that the images created are false constructions. But not making any images doesn’t seem like an option either, images seem to spring up wherever they can, and if total openness exists it comes at the price of worldly dysfunction. Maybe you can make an image that leaves room to be reopened, like a magical cabinet that undoes time and space.

In this book our focus is directed towards the lens and planes that make up the image, the relationship between the camera body and the layers of objects and bodies infront of it. Things behind things or inside things give you the feeling of being situated in space. It evokes some amount of movement on our part, rethinking the position of the camera, a slight refocusing of the eye. It shows sheets of resistance between things, how our life is structured by divisions and chambers of various kinds. Cars, houses, children, heart shaped locks, looks, plastic, windows; everything can be seen as tension cutting through, holding and framing, physical and temporal space.