Precessions
In Simulacra and Simulation, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard questions the relationship between reality, symbols and society. Baudrillard believes that our contemporary society has substituted reality and meaning with symbols and signs. Moreover, he believes that society has become so overloaded with these simulacra and our lives so pervaded with the constructs of society that all meaning had been made meaningless by “the infinitely mutable.” Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “precession of simulacra.” My photographic constructs are illustrative of such a precession and what Baudrillard calls “the proof of art through antiart.” All the photographs were shot digitally through the view-finder of an analog camera, either a Ciro-flex or a Kodak Duaflex. By using the old technology of these analog cameras to create an image of an image, I’m interested in making a link to a historical period when the flow of simulacra was just beginning to create an era of mass reproduction and reproducibility. Is our electronic media culture one of too much information, or a mere pretense, a sham of vague representation? A Simulacrum?
