BRYCE JULIEN

A Rubber Boot, a Mailbox, a Phonebook (2020)

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Artist Statement / A Rubber Boot, a Mailbox, a Phonebook is an exploration of the material and technological limitations that shape the creative process, promoting experimentation and improvisation.

The series chronicles a progression of photographic discoveries oriented through vernacular objects, questioning if photographic curiosity is dependent on its technology or observational subjectivity. Using a pinhole camera, a found object has been photographed, then transformed into a pinhole camera itself and used to photograph a subsequent found object, which then becomes a pinhole camera in turn. This methodology repeats, each image indexed by the unique characteristics of the previous camera’s physicality.

The cameras pose an experimental question: can this object take a picture? The results produced by the camera’s answer with the state of their image. These photographic objects are newfound evidence of the cameras’ somatic role in a causal investigation.