LONDON.- This April Daniel Blau Ltd. presents a selection of images that question the role of identity and scale the vintage photographic oeuvre. Since photography’s beginning the question of representation and truth has been widely discussed, complicated by the medium’s insistence on “realism”. In a photograph grandeur is minimised, compacted, and fixed like Baltic amber pulled from the sea, ensnaring the maker’s “vision” in reduced format.

Moving along into the 20th century, photographic technology advanced to such a degree that the operator of the camera no longer even needed to be present – imagine the first view of Earth from Space encrypted in video and produced in a Californian Lab. We can think back to the origins of photography and to Daguerre with his famous dioramas – large-scale theatrical backdrops that intended to represent more closely the feeling of being pulled into a vision of the mountains and streams of ancient Greece. So what happens when we reduce the idea of optics to a singular two-dimensional object? Can we identify our place within the frame or must we also compress, reduce, and rend the photograph to fit our own scale within the universe?

We live in a new era of rapid technological advancements built upon major achievements such as the infamous atomic bomb testings in the Pacific atolls. Why should our understanding of our place within the frame not also advance?