Middle Gate

Ria Pacquée and her camera regularly roam the streets, on the lookout for life on the street and for pictures that can bring this life to expression. This series consists of nine of these photographs, selected and arranged according to form, and presented in three rows of three. The formal disposition elicits a comparison between people and objects that all lead a roaming life, and have come to stand outside society. They seem removed from their original identity and function. They have their own individual histories, and the question is how they came to wind up where they have. In this way the similarity of form underlines the similarity of content. While both people and objects have center-stage in the image, their ‘averted’ pose and their cover make them not wholly visible, and give them the impression of not being truly present. They are at once visible and invisible, present and not present. The photographs are framed like small paintings, and are hung close to each other. Considered individually they don’t represent much, but together they tell a story by grace of their mutual relationships. On their own they seem like casual snaps, a registration of reality. But the manner of their association again points to a ‘staging’, to a manipulation of reality. This creates a game between from and content, presence and absence, and between fiction and reality as well.