Steven Pippin explores the relationship between art and technology, engineering cameras from unlikely found materials such as washing machines. Pippin typically has to plan and construct a significant amount of supporting equipment in order to achieve his pictures. Frequently the resulting photographs are distorted or otherwise compromised by the manner of their construction, but the imperfections are seen as an important characteristic of the image, giving a link back to the object which was used as a camera.
In recent works he argues that the exponential growth of digital photography is inversely proportional to its direct quality of content. As more cameras are produced and integrated into other products, the quality falls away at an ever-increasing rate – the quality of content rather than of the resolution. He argues that the saturation of images has now reached such a state that it will overwhelm reality. The sheer volume of imagery, both hardcopy and digital binary data, will eventually physically outweigh the mass of the Earth. In his most recent body of work the artist has created compelling creative images out of destruction. Pippin shoots vintage 35mm cameras with .25 caliber pistol and nanoseconds later the bullet annihilates the camera. The resultant images herald the death of old technology and raise questions about image quality and control.
Steven Pippin came to prominence when he was nominated for The Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in 1999. His extraordinary artwork is now one of the most memorable exhibits in the history of the prize. His entry was based on the work Laundromat Locomotion, in which he converted a row of 12 washing machines in a laundromat into a series of cameras triggered by trip wires, and then rode a horse through the laundromat to recreate Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion (1878).
He has since shown his work internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, Frac Limousin, France and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
