Lifeless faces - Waterhead

Matthijs Rouw

It started during the period I lived in Sydney, Australia as part of my study, February-May 2004.

One day, as I walked through Paddington, past the Aussie stadium, a fire hydrant caught my attention because it had the shape of a face. I kept it in mind in order to could come back later, to take a photo of it. It did not take long before I started to see faces in other objects as well. Now I just can not help seeing them everywhere. Hopefully you will see the faces in my photos as well. Hopefully you will start seeing them everywhere, too ..

The selection of scanned photos in the Utatan project were part of a larger series of hand-developed and hand-printed 35mm black and white photos in very small format (3.6*5.2 cm / 1.42*2.05 in.). The series formed my final project for an analogue black and white photography course. Because I actually stumbled upon the photo's around Sydney, I chose to represent them scattered across a wall.

By printing the faces in a very small size forced the viewer to move closely to each face. The idea was to grab all of the viewer's attention and concentration. I hoped that locals could never see the objects in their surroundings without seeing the faces in them, after looking at my photos.

I received a HD (High Distinction) grade for the project.

These, and more if my work can be found on my portfolio at www.thingsdesigner.com

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