Faculty of Art

Photography

José Mancía

cannibal (i)

Cannibal is a series of images that complicates the consumptive gaze of the viewer in encountering the Other as a subject. Using a diffusive vinyl screen to obscure and to and distort the form of the subject, the extractive methods of photography are restrained. As a result, a challenge is presented to the viewer’s normally a priori relationship to which the Other as subject yields via photographic expression. In withholding clarity of detail – of likeness, identity and subjecthood, the traditional vernacular of photography is reworked. The privilege of the viewer to encounter the Other as subject via the photograph is resisted, and a reminder is issued that the exchange that occurs between subject and viewer afforded by photography is not inherently mutual.