Guinness Frateur’s practice explores the process behind the image. By focusing on how the image is made, instead of what it depicts, attention is brought to the image as an object. Through this process, mediums such as photography can be used separately from its genres, creating a space where they become autonomous. The content of the work becomes the work itself, questioning ideas of depiction and the notion of “the captured moment”.
The presentation of these works further examines this “object status”, while also allowing for interaction and play with the surrounding space. The supporting structures that surround them, like frames or pedestals, are all self-made. This enables control over their methods of display. Using the familiar and standardised structures, yet in non-conventional ways, amplifies their status of being in-between image and object. For example, displaying framed silver gelatine prints horizontally on pedestals as to recall the darkroom trays in which they were developed, or using half-solid red epoxy to enclose an unfixed darkroom print.
While these works “capture” their own process, they remain unstable. This allows the images to change over time, bringing into question their ephemerality and the idea of an image as a document.