Our daily life subjects us to a constant flow of images. On television, online, in the street or at the doctor’s, they shape our representations of the world and our relations with others, to produce 8 billion subjectivities bolstered by each culture’s assumptions. Images are not necessarily neutral and they affect each of us differently, reinforcing, modifying or reducing our arsenal of prejudices. In this light our perceptual world appears dynamic, infinite and endlessly rearranged by the concerted influence of the images, sensitivities and preconceived intellectual categories that together act to shape it. The images of 9/11, for example, may have aroused terror or joy, but seldom indifference. They have enabled an event charged with meaning to seep into individual consciousnesses and shape public opinion.
But images do more than simply divide and polarise. That would not explain why thousands of individuals, of different ages, sex, nations and cultures, like the same images on Instagram and Facebook. Is there a universal “something” that these images convey, and which transcends mental barriers and the seemingly total sovereignty of our individuality?
During my thirty years as a photographer I have often been struck by the comments of visitors to my exhibitions, and by their retrospective interpretations. When artists show their work they expose themselves; their personal vision of the world encounters the eyes and minds of visitors, who respond in turn with their own visions, overlaying the individual artist’s work with the sum of their subjectivities and remaking it for themselves. In this way the work on show is enriched or impoverished by the eyes of others.
My work reflects this infinity of perceptual possibility, while simultaneously emphasising the unity of the human race, above and beyond our differences.
Carmeline Taiello
For my girls, Mathilde, Louise, Marie and Sophie.