BEN DEHAAN

DAISIES IN THE CHAIN

Photographing is an act of navigating representation and framework. What information to do we decide to contain, isolate, copy, fragment, and crop away? These decisions place the image into hierarchies and create a form of visual taxonomy that omits a surrounding context by its nature. Can something ever be fully represented through a photograph and can exact copy truly exist? How does the act of looking at an image translate to how we observe and identify with the world around us?

“Daisies in the Chain” explores these questions by presenting the body, the image, and the landscape as unique inter-relating subjects that build and respond as the surrounding context evolves. By altering images by hand and rearranging them in physical space, I am drawing attention to the body’s involvement within the image making process and how shifting environmental factors, both physical and metaphysical, have a direct connection to that process.

Western understanding is often pinned down by language and framing - the need to explain by breaking up into static linear pieces. By allowing the represented subjects to adapt and evade alignment, I am creating a sense of beingthat is in flux; one directly responding to and engaging with moving borders. In constantly reworking the image, the subject can slip into a position of mysterious power. It is not a form to be objectified or consumed by the viewer but rather a being of its own agency dissolving into a dense image-space ecosystem.