The Last of Exotic Archives
The Last of Exotic Archives is a fictional photographic archive.
It consists of a collection of portraits, that pretend to document human life on earth from many different corners of the world. By being presented as an authentic anthropographic record, the work actually plays with the concept of truth in photographic representation and the assumption of knowledge as such.
The collaborators Lilli Hartmann and Cristina Rocha, don’t treat facts as sacrosanct, but introduce through their visual fiction, a layered and provocative social comment. Masquerade and switching gender roles are not only present in the various images of the archive, but also in the particularity, that the two female artists actually conceal their identities behind the pseudonym of Cyril Elijah Jones, who is the supposed photographer and founder of this body of work.
Travel photographers walk the streets of this world to bring back stories, feelings and impressions from far away places and the people that stay behind are hungry for these stories of the ‚unknown‘ and ‚unfamiliar‘.
The Last of Exotic Archives makes a radical shortcut: by inventing the world from at home and somewhat turning it inside-out, it aims to break free from personal restrictions as well as geographic limitations.
It consists of a collection of portraits, that pretend to document human life on earth from many different corners of the world. By being presented as an authentic anthropographic record, the work actually plays with the concept of truth in photographic representation and the assumption of knowledge as such.
The collaborators Lilli Hartmann and Cristina Rocha, don’t treat facts as sacrosanct, but introduce through their visual fiction, a layered and provocative social comment. Masquerade and switching gender roles are not only present in the various images of the archive, but also in the particularity, that the two female artists actually conceal their identities behind the pseudonym of Cyril Elijah Jones, who is the supposed photographer and founder of this body of work.
Travel photographers walk the streets of this world to bring back stories, feelings and impressions from far away places and the people that stay behind are hungry for these stories of the ‚unknown‘ and ‚unfamiliar‘.
The Last of Exotic Archives makes a radical shortcut: by inventing the world from at home and somewhat turning it inside-out, it aims to break free from personal restrictions as well as geographic limitations.