Undercover
Using shoeboxes rescued from trash or appropriated secondhand, pinhole cameras
were made over a 6-month period and placed underneath parked cars
temporarily to expose their unseen body parts. Various photographic paper, film
types and exposure times were experimented with to trace each boxes encounter,
vulnerably scarring and recording the photographic material.
While some of the photographs were taken locally and with neighbours’ permission,
diary entries reveal the risks taken in sneaking these re-fashioned cameras – oblivious
and suspicious to the potential car owner– underneath vehicles that are the private
belongings of others, and with the intensity with what could happen if caught.
Appearing medical in its gaze and forensic in its surveillance, Undercover
subverts several binaries at once. Keeping suspended the gap between human and
machine, private and public, street and home, hidden and seen; identification with
neither and both of these supposed binaries occur in this urban underworld.
written by artist and writer Benjamin Carey, 2018
Diary samples:
https://files.cargocollective.com/321198/Diary-samples.pdf
Undercover book:
https://katrinastamatopoulos.net/Books
Installation view, Tottenham, London, 2018
unique c-type C41 & black and white photographs, ground sealant
Trapped in a valve, 2018
exhaust pipe, speaker,mini ipod