Josephine Pryde – Intimate Portraits of Thinking

After twenty years on the contemporary art scene, Josephine Pryde started receiving more attention. In April 2012, one of her photographs of guinea pigs appeared on the cover of the American Artforum magazine, which also included an extensive review of her retrospective exhibition, Miss Austen Enjoys Photography¹. In the exhibition, Pryde presented photographic series with objects, built, for example, from straw baskets or other small items. Such an arrangement is symptomatic for Pryde: she might often be perceived primarily as a photographer, but photography is only one of the media she uses in her exhibitions. Her presentations always combine images with other elements in the form of sculptures or installations that put Pryde’s photographic work in a new context and create different meanings.

In her exhibitions, Pryde deals with the process of their production, from the beginning to the final presentation and communication within the art institution. Her photographic work is concentrated primarily in larger units in the form of series. One example is a series of photographs of guinea pigs which range from near portrait photography to pictures of cute animals we share with family and friends on the Internet. Pryde used guinea pigs because of their link to laboratory experiments. The resulting series, Scale (2012), where the artist changes both the still life and the depth and focus of each portrait, makes a special, rather disturbing impression, especially in contrast to series such as Conception (2011) or It’s Not My Body (2011). As the titles suggest, both these series deal with the theme of conception and pregnancy. In Conception, Pryde captured the expressions of women responding to positive pregnancy tests; in It’s Not My Body, she overlapped MRI images of human embryos with photographs of barren landscapes. The second series is a response to the debates on pregnancy, abortion, and the possibility of the mother to make decisions about her body.

Last year, Pryde was nominated for the British Turner Prize for her exhibition Lapses in Thinking by the Person I Am,² first presented at the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco. The exhibition consisted of a series of photographs titled Hands Für Mich (2014–2016) and a tiny but functional model train. Visitors could take a ride while viewing the photographs hanging on the walls, moving very slowly around, almost as if watching billboards from out a real train window. The ride on the spray-painted model train provided the interactive element, something that is in great demand these days, in a deliberately dull form. The combination of the Hands Für Mich series and the model train was presented several times, always slightly modified. In reconstructing the Lapses in Thinking by the Person I Am series, nominated for the Turner Prize, Pryde made small, but significant changes to the original concept – the train became stationary, and the exhibition also included kitchen worktops with decals of objects of different shapes, created by the summer sun. In the period between the nomination and the exhibition opening, the worktops were in three places: London and Berlin – the two cities where Pryde has worked in recent years – and Athens, which became an important point of conflict between Europe and refugees. Pryde, who also teaches contemporary photography at the Universität der Künste (UDK) and coordinates internships for UDK students, regards travel and the opportunity to live abroad as a human right, not a matter of coincidence. Thus, her series of kitchen worktops (and even the stationary model train) could be seen as a commentary on mobility in the post-Brexit world. Kitchen worktops, created using a method similar to old photograms, were in a stark contrast to the Hands Für Mich series, inspired by the latest aesthetic modes mainly in advertising photography.

At first glance, the Hands Für Mich series resembles stock photographs, but it is a series of portraits. In the centre of the portraits, however, there are hands and various items touched by the hands or fingers: a sweater, a chest, a pen and a series of touch devices, such as a lamp or tablet and phone displays. Thus, the touch or haptic control becomes the main theme of the series and the unifying factor of otherwise quite diverse photographs. The zooming in and focusing on the touch point underlines its importance in the current world, where it becomes a form of thinking, makes important decisions, organizes social relations, and obscures the boundaries between virtuality and reality. At present, communication technology devices become extensions of our bodies and have important roles – they are essentially irreplaceable. In her series, Pryde emphasizes the intimacy of touch and uses advertising aesthetics to transform it into something very attractive, something that will help us to forget – albeit momentarily – the hidden dangers in the world controlled by smart software.

Text | Natálie Drtinová

MAGES CAPTIONS

1 | installation view, The Turner Prize 2016, Tate Britain
2 | For Myself 2, c-print, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 in., 2014
3 | Für Uns 3, c-print, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 in., 2014
4 | A Friend, c-print, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 in., 2015
5 | Your Secure and Private Path, c-print, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 in., 2015
6 | Sorry Not Sorry, c-print, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 in., 2016
© courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong