The Apparatus I

The Apparatus comprises of over two hundred portraits inspired by  August Sander’s iconic photograph Painter’s Wife (ca. 1926) in which , the subject, Helene Abelen, cuts a defiantly androgynous figure. Oliver Chanarin (b. 1971) used this picture as a starting point for a collaborative photographic study of his wife, Fiona Jane Burgess, produced while they quarantined in their London home in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Made between household chores and childcare duties, the portraits are playful, and born out of of the boredom and frustration of lockdown.  

 In contrast to  intimacy of the photographs, which Chanarin printed by hand in  an analogue darkroom the installation was inspired by the automated distribution centers of global online retailers. An apparatus hangs and rehangs the pictures for the duration of the exhibition. They are initially hung randomly, but over the course of the presentation, the device monitors the time visitors spend looking at specific works and uses the results to make its selections. Chanarin describes it as “an icon-producing machine” that responds to viewers’ preferences and speaks to our everyday experience of images online, where our attention is claimed as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales. He has observed that the attention economy, in which images accrue value through views, has turned human behavior into the most valuable natural resource on earth. 

Curated by Erin O’Toole

Read The Body and the machine by Jana Johanna Haeckel in the British Journal of Photography.