Earlier today the entire photography class went on a trip to to Nottingham to look around the art galleries, never having been to Nottingham, I thought this would be a really good exprience and a nice trip to break up the module a bit.
We first went to Nottingham Contemporary to see the work of Thomas Demand, a german artist whose collection we saw, named 'Model studies' consisted of extreme close-ups of scale models. Demand is known for often changing the dynamics of the exhibition space he has been given, however this time at Nottingham Contemp he said the space was perfect for his work.
Most of the models we saw pictured by Demand were made from cardboard, foamboard, plastic trees and coloured papers. Most of the models were made by the late american modernist architect John Lautner. Demand found them at the Getty research centre, most of the are as small as shoeboxes and some even smaller.
What's odd about this body of work is that the models are barely bigger than a shoebox yet his macro images are printed around a metre and a half tall and a similar size in width, being this size makes them alarmingly immersive, like you could just step into them and walk around on the minuscule cardboard structures. The images blur the line between reality and miniature, looking at some I felt almost like I was looking at the biulding itself, in a skewed sort of way.
Thouhg depending on where you were standing, the images appeared different to the eye, too close and they lost most of their definition and imapct, too far and it becomes too small looking, an odd thought for images that are barely a few milimetres in reality. Also being too far away you lost the ability to feel like you could step into it. I decided to walk around the gallery looking at his work from between 5 and 10 meters away from the frames.
I've always loved macro work, but this is so much more amazing than that. It's like a macro of a macro.
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