ZOOM
This work, zoomed in appropriations from the archive (an archive photograph of the work's canteen), are digital prints on recycled photocopy paper at A4 size; they are pictures of low quality, degraded to what Hito Steyerl notes is the hurried blur of a poor image (Steyerl, H, 2009). Taken out of both context and the archive, these zoomed in images are out of focus, or out of the original focus of the photograph, and by moving into the picture, shift its intended subject from the canteen’s festive decorations to its workers in the background.
Focused now on the unresolved distance and the blur, these images bring the background, like the past, into view and though still indexing the past, still a timestamp, they disturb and destabilise a straightforward view of place and begin to explore the relationship between resolution and hierarchy. The speed and movement of zooming upsets the status quo of the image and opens up intriguing possibilities for interrogating and disturbing other hierarchies at play in both archival narratives and the contemporary site of work.