Surrogate Portraits
The artists’ plants are documented, catalogued and archived in the same way as the photographic indexing of their analog audio-visual equipment.
A series of photographs shot in large format, in a studio with natural daylight: Portraits of living species in some ways mimicking the studio shoot of a person or model. Over the years, these plants have experienced a variety of vicissitudes, some of which have left indelible marks, caused irreparable damage or even lead to their demise: they have wounds and scars, signs of disease, had their leaves eaten by various insects and in some cases been amputated.
A series of 9 digital shots were taken of the studio environment at the time of the shooting of the Surrogate Portraits series. The frame is large, we see the props, the photographic backdrop, the mirrors used in reflecting and refracting natural light and a few fleeting actions, showing the artists watering and attending to a plant as one would attend to a portrait sitter.