Leon & Johannes

I was in the tube, looking out of its moving windows towards the stream of passing 
house and shopping windows. When we entered a tunnel and the windows blackened, 
I looked around and noticed how almost all of the passengers were holding to and 
looking into their own personal windows. I felt the uncanniness of this visual semantic satiation. At that point the window somehow slipped my mind.

Photography and windows share a common history, complexity and everywhereness. Both frame and mediate our view upon the world. Both are technologies which structure our perception, and both raise questions about reality, identity and origin by relating to 
power, truth and representation in similar ways.

In my work I aim to question what windows are and what they can be, trying to reveal the irreducible complexity of this mundane threshold. „Leon & Johannes“ is a residential windows, produced as a glazed photograph. Standing on wooden legs, the window leans against the wall. It is covered with a protective foil, half of which is unwrapped and crinkles on the surface. Moving out of the pictorial space into its environment, the foil as well as the wood serve as extensions of the image. Playing with our assumptions about windows and photography and by relating to their production process, „Leon & Johannes“ aims to destabilise the way we conceive both windows and photography.

installation view photography © jenniferpattison