Camera Self-Portrait II (Eyemo-Capa)
For this work, Julià appropriated the iconic image of photojournalist Robert Capa looking through the view-finder of his "Eyemo" 16 mm camera and asked a medical illustrator to render an anatomical drawing imagining the camera as part of Capa’s body. He then created a lenticular image so that the drawing "fills in" the portrait of Capa.
The mythic image of the ethically committed photographer, whose life is continuously imperiled by the act of witnessing, functions allegorically in the present context of a rapidly approaching fusion of man and smartphone. Julià implies that the techno-utopian promise that the camera once held as an extender of human vision in every sense has yielded to limiting the individual’s horizon of photographic possibility to narcissistic projection and acquiescence to regimes of consumption and political manipulation.
The mythic image of the ethically committed photographer, whose life is continuously imperiled by the act of witnessing, functions allegorically in the present context of a rapidly approaching fusion of man and smartphone. Julià implies that the techno-utopian promise that the camera once held as an extender of human vision in every sense has yielded to limiting the individual’s horizon of photographic possibility to narcissistic projection and acquiescence to regimes of consumption and political manipulation.
Artwork Details
- Title: Camera Self-Portrait II (Eyemo-Capa)
- Artist: Adrià Julià (Spanish, born 1974)
- Artist: After Gerda Taro (German, 1910–1937)
- Person in Photograph: Person in photograph Robert Capa (American (born Hungary), Budapest 1913–1954 Thai Binh)
- Date: 2014
- Medium: Lenticular print
- Dimensions: Image: 11 5/8 × 8 1/4 in. (29.6 × 21 cm)
Frame: 20 9/16 × 16 5/8 in. (52.3 × 42.3 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2014
- Object Number: 2014.451
- Rights and Reproduction: © Adrià Julià
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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