This image of a bin liner subverts both the mundaneness of the initial object - a blue plastic garbage bag that you turn into a sculptural object - and the stillness of a still-life – by injecting motion into the picture. What was the concept forming the premise for this series? How can we show without showing... how to represent a 'hidden' object? Over and over again, we find ourselves inside problems to be solved.
Here, a light-blue garbage bag rotating at 33 revolutions per minute on a turntable undergoes – thanks to patient recording by the camera’s eye − a wonderful metamorphosis: the image transforms a garbage bag into a vase worthy of inclusion in a modern art museum as a rare design piece. This was the result of playing around on the set with this subject. Many of our series come alive as we are building and discovering the potential of the objects.
In the 1920’s, some Bauhaus artists explored product photography, focusing on the very heart of the object, its graphic aspects and its materiality. Your approach seems very similar. Do you also feel that product photography allows limitless artistic exploration? And how so?Yes, we believe there is no limit in showing a product in an artistic manner, while still being good to the product. We see products as building blocks for our compositions.
In our commissioned work, one of the criteria is to preserve their photographic quality beyond the specific campaign that it was initially made for. We like to approach commissioned, editorial and exhibition work in an equally 'important' way. These worlds have even turned out to be a breeding ground for each other. It's like showing the viewer something more than is actually there, through the play between two- and three-dimensionality, while remaining visually open about how things are done.
How do you work together? We do most of our work in full collaboration. As we both like to arrange our 'home crafted' sets down to the tiniest detail, we have explored ways to work in which we play at moving things around and finding the right balance in the picture.
Limited edition, numbered and signed.