Net
Photographs by Elaine Duigenan
January 29 through March 29, 2009
Duigenan's photographs have a very ambiguous yet visceral quality. I like how they seem to rely on form and texture alone while making use of negative space. I did not realize they were hairnets at first glance and found Duigenan's explanation of them as objects with underlying metaphors quite intriguing. Perhaps this is because in my own work I have observed and photographed various objects that are either found, left behind, or made to reveal or create narratives about them.
British photographer Elaine Duigenan is fascinated with what she calls "intimate archaeology," taking familiar - sometimes discarded, sometimes valued - objects and exploring the metaphors that lie below the surface. In doing so, the objects transcend the limits of their own significance.
"For me, photography has become an act of preservation and objects I focus on become the locators or igniters of memory," says Duigenan (pronounced Dygnun). "The traces and remnants we find in any landscape can spark recognition. They can even evoke a presence." Hairnets have been found in gravesites and archeological digs since the 13th century. Duigenan worked from her own collection of hairnets, some intricately constructed from real human hair, made between the 1920s and 1950s. The scanned hairnets have been described as "a Rorschach romp of associations: nets become jellyfish, a heart, or a bird's wing."
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