TIMOTHY BARNES

SERIES  & REPETITION

I get up then walk the dog every morning, lunch time and evening:           Series, Repetition.
I frequently change routes :                                                                                 Difference

Difference is the spice in repetition, a positive affect.

In some ways I think I have had a long relationship with repetition, I guess we all do. Loving it and  trying to avoid it. When I was young I studied to become a comic artist, but soon learned that the figures I was drawing, the poses ( superhero ) would repeat themselves frequently. I moved on to become a photographer only to discover ( after 20 years) that I was repeating myself  for commercial demand.

The same thing over and over again can be comforting, but it also tends to get monotonous and can lead to lack of individuality and identity.  When one is young it is essential to experience new things, but the older one gets the more resistance one has towards change.

A habit is repetition.

And then there is the repetition through copying of an original, either for reproduction value or to take it out of its context. Both processes change the original.

With this installation I have taken a polaroid picture blown it up and xeroxed the image on transparent film. Then I took that copy and put it through the same process and so on….

The outcome is a more and more distorted photo. It has associations of the limits of cell reproduction (Hayflick Limit) but also in view of the current media development, in the discussion about social media and fake news one can ask the question about the „original“ and the perversion of such.