Melissa Mahon
Real/ Unreal
My work interrogates the photograph as both message and object. The subtle nuance of working in digital as opposed to analogue raises questions of representation, appropriation, as well as the implications of sharing photographs using social media. Asking the question of whether reality can ever be present in a photograph?
The series of work borrows stock photographs from Google of world figures. There is a contradiction because the ‘given’ digital photographs, which are deliberately compressed digital information, are pixelated and illegible when printed larger – yet become clear when viewed from a distance.