Manuel Baptista and Dominiek Braet (polarama revisited)

Another selection of work first shown on polarama.com back in 2001. Especially interesting with reference to my recent posts on images derived from TV screens. See the posts: David Friend. Watching the World Change. (2), Zhao Qing. Beijing Olympics on TV (and no comment), and Images of TV screens for instance. Indeed, the title of the work one day, I went to the movies references this very means of production. So it is with great pleasure that I present a small selection of their work here.

Source pictures: photographs by Manuel Baptista taken mainly between 1994 and 1998. These pictures went through a series of non-physical and non-digital transformations (photocopy, color manipulation by light projection, video, etc).  The final images are SX-70 Polaroids taken in 1998 from a TV screen.  Without any guidelines, Dominiek Braet created the titles for each series. Together, titles and images form the visual concept. The artists believe that by 'separate cooperation', they help each other to understand the meaning of their own personal worlds.  Images in search for words. Words looking for images. Fragments of a strange life, moments that never come back.

the night i was denied.

one day, I went to the movies.

past/abyss/present/habit/future/rabbit/CATCH IT!

Manuel Baptista and Dominiek Braet have created some very powerful work here (and that it is a collaboration is another interesting point to note), and not just in relation to my re-occurring interest in Polaroid images derived from the TV screens. The titles function in interesting and disparate ways (abstract and referential); the experimentation with image reproduction - incorporating both digital and non-digital means of manipulation - extends the use of the screen as a (final) source for the resulting Polaroid image; and the relationships between the images in each specific work- incorporating duplication and variation - all makes this re-visit to polarama illuminating.