Artists

Niklas Taleb

Press release

Photographing a young child, their face stills in front of the camera, as they look into the device, held up to and obscuring the face of the artist. The child is an infant, they have no notion of the photograph as an object, but they respond to the act of documentation. Curled over themselves on top of a small tabletop all attention in the image is focused by their gaze. Around them a discarded diaper, bits of paper, and two socks that belong to someone with larger feet. Traces of movement, the objects that circle us in the home, generic family life articulated through tiny particularities. Another photograph, an older child’s eyes, nose, and mouth are up close to the camera lens, joyful and curious. The face is the communicative centre of all portraiture, but it keeps the viewer out as much as it draws us in– the threshold to subjectivity. In the first image, the younger nonverbal child arrests us, while in the second the older child engages and trespasses beyond the camera’s focus, almost exceeding the frame.