Reflecting on myths and mortality
Published: 30 Jun 2014 at 06.04 | Viewed: 331 | Comments: 0Newspaper section: Life
How do you photograph bodily sensations and our pre-programmed cellular decay? Elizabeth Preger’s sensitive, sombre work instantly reminds us of one of Buddhism’s meditation mantras — “Rising...Falling”, which is also used as a reflection on death.
“Here Are My Teeth: Black With Stars” is a photographic exhibition by the American photographer whose practice focuses on ideas of myth-making, as well as photography’s historical relationship to mortality and place.
Preger will put on show extreme close-ups of vulnerable naked body parts conveying fleshy sensations — a hand with mottled nail varnish lightly fingering a hairy navel; downy feathers scattered across a female torso; and the bone-like textures of seashells worn smooth by the might of sea and wind, carefully collected in a white porcelain bowl with a soft raised pattern of bending leaves.
Beside each image of “life” will be its reverse — the nipple covered with make-up in “life” which is now stained black, making it look more like the nipple of a corpse, and the pristine bowl of shells marred by black grease, evoking ecological disaster, death as the stinking oil slick that suffocates all life and defaces beauty.
- ‘Here Are My Teeth: Black With Stars’ will be displayed at Kathmandu Photo Gallery from July 5-Aug 31 with the opening party on July 5 at 6.30pm. - The gallery is on Thanon Pan (near the Indian Temple),Silom, and opens Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. - Call 02-234-6700.
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