Long Xi Vlessing | A Bag Full of Acorns, A Bag Full of Ashes

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Long Xi Blessing, "A Bag Full of Acorns, A Bag Full of Ashes"

Courtesy of the Gallery.

In an increasingly public social milieu, photographs realize the voyeuristic possibility of being seen having a private moment in a public world. Suspending both fleeting strangers and near acquaintances in jarring light and colour, Vlessing's photographs depict abrupt subjects in revelatory moments— in the throes of primal fear, contending with social upheaval, or perhaps in mere moments of contemplation, awkwardness, or acorn-collecting.

With these photographs in particular imagining privileged subjects, laconic text and title offer binary interpretations, mirroring a privileged gaze and leaning on imagination rather than critical vision. As such, these works question the anecdotal validity of narrative photography by obscuring the definite reality of those pictured while illuminating on outward expression, probing from an alien perspective that threatens to disrupt anxious interior worlds.

With these narrative interventions, Vlessing's photographs marry humanity and satire while teasing at the politics of the everyday, entering the photographs into a web of social relations and inviting us to consider how chance moments can be written as staged fakes: emotions as mere simulacra in the visual field, and the body as a sign in circulation.

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