Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin: Fig.

by Julian Stallabrass, Adam Broomberg (Photographer), Oliver Chanarin (Photographer)

Fig. features over 80 still lives, portraits and landscapes by London-based photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Tracing connections between photography and British colonial acquisitiveness, they unearth and document weird arcana from Victorian collections in various public museums. As Broomberg and Chanarin themselves have "the history of photography is intimately bound up with the idea of colonial power. Documentary photographers today have a worrying amount in common with the collector/adventurers of past eras. As unreliable witnesses, we have gathered together 'evidence' of our experiences and present our findings here; a muddle of fact and fantasy." The items photographed range from bizarre objects found at the Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton, such as a merman's body and a unicorn's horn, to ancient waxworks and a dodo skeleton; or from floral arrangements found in the rooms of Hotel Rwanda to a single leaf blown from a tree in Tel Aviv by a bomb blast.

Genres: Photography

144 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Julian Stallabrass is an English art historian, photographer and curator. He was educated at Leighton Park School and New College, Oxford University where he studied PPE. A Marxist, he has written extensively on contemporary art (including internet art), photography and the history of twentieth century British art.

Reviews

[Joe]

Review at 5B4.