DOMINIK KLIMOWSKI: 17 Apr 2016

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window really utilises and emphasises film and photography’s capacity for voyeurism. It can be argued that the mediums are natural instruments for voyeurism and our desire for observation at a safe distance.

Gail Albert Halaban and Georgio Barrera take this concept to an almost literal conclusion by photographic scenes where we can see directly through people’s windows and into their homes.

With Charles, Matton’s work, we are shown places which are made as small-scale models, but with an unnerving sense of detail and realism (aided by the fact that there are no people present. The fact that the rooms are empty adds to their mystery. Matton’s motivation for making and photographing his model spaces was to bear witness to “what seems”. They would ‘hold a mirror up to the real’. It is a luminal quality which I find fascinating. Like Hitchcock’s apartments in Rear Window (they were not real but a huge purpose-built set), the artist has total control in creating a space for which they can create their own ‘before’, ‘after’, as well as running narrative.

Director Wes Anderson is known for creating entire fictional worlds in which the stories of his films can play out. His most recent, The Grand Budapest Hotel, skips through time and shows the hotel of the title as it looks in two separate eras. Anderson took total control of everything, from sets, to costumes, to the graphic design on cake boxes. All normal as far as films go, but in his case the designs are fabricated entirely for the story.

A great use of set design is in his film ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ where an entire boat is constructed without ‘the fourth wall’ so the camera can glide between cabins and sections, showing us where everything is located, as you would expect in an architectural cross-section. Only here the scene is played out live, with characters on the boat going about their business. It is a technique most commonly seen in comic books, or cartoons, and suits the quirky ‘Boy’s Own Adventure’ style of narrative.

Having written stories myself, I have always enjoyed creating photographic worlds which are entirely fabricated, but retain some semblance of reality. I like the ideas of 'timeless' places as well as locations which are not determined, but take as their inspiration various locations I have either been to, read about, watched in films, or even dreamed about.

My project will use this sense of an undetermined place and time, as I am continuing on the idea of making a social comment through a fictional place, like all good science fiction.