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Photographer - Stephen Walter
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New Parliament
Computer Processed, Archival Ink Jet Print,
95cm x 118cm, 2000 |
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Let’s take, for example, the photograph showing the Big Ben and the British Parliament. The Big Ben appears on thousands of postcards
and tourists’ photos. It has become a cliché, an over-used icon symbolizing London, so much so that no one, (except kitsch-chasers)
can bear looking at it any longer. But Walter views this clock in an entirely different way: In his work, the Big Ben is transformed into a
strange kind of lighthouse, with one eye shining and the other blind. New elements take over the picture, relegating the symbol of British
sovereignty to the background, divesting it of its imperial greatness and turning it into a deserted, blurred, helpless image. Wires rise
towards the sky, bypassing the rule of the Parliament and establishing communication with regions far beyond. On the other hand, note
the entirely ironic parallel between the banister in the foreground and the architectural rhythm of the Neo-Gothic facade of the Parliament
also recurring in another photograph: |
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Since we, the spectators, are standing behind the banister, we are invited to view this symbol of sovereignty exactly so: from afar and
ironically, just like the image of the man urinating, with the tree to his right, in front of a cathedral. |
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A different kind of spatial strangeness evident in these photographs is created by “shrinking” the distance between ground and sky.
In Glastonbury Tor the sky is laid “on” the ground , like a mass or a second floor . |
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The gaze here is not unlike the one in the photograph of the Parliament: The mighty sky is made strange and even a little frightening
exactly because it is so close at hand, much too near. Similarly to the photo of the Parliament, the light (there – in the clock, here –
in the sky) looks “glued on”, not inherent to the picture and therefore a little threatening and somewhat ridiculous, grotesque.
The same light recurs in other pictures in different forms, giving the places a different context and turning them into different suburbs
of one imaginary “city”. It is a city where the symbols of power and greatness are declining and becoming ridiculous, but at the same
time they are also brought nearer, perhaps too near. It is a much too picturesque world, that is, a world offering a somewhat exaggerated
imitation of art. It aspires too much to beauty, thereby turning into an intriguing, disturbing and threatening world. |
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