Surrogates

Luciano Rigolini
Surrogates

Photographs: Luciano Rigolini

Publisher: Centre Culturel Suisse

128 pages

Year: 2012

Comments: Green clothbound hardcover, japanese binding. 205 x 150 mm. First edition, 2012. Text in french and in english. Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol.III, p.301.

Luciano Rigolini’s interest in vernacular photography simultaneously questions this particular mode of representation. He carefully collects neutral images of objects or urban features removed of any human presence or trace, such as photographs intended for sales catalogues or mechanical handbooks. Presented in their found state, or thoroughly retouched and enlarged, Rigolini’s images reveal an aesthetic approach filled with sculptural, pictorial and metaphorical qualities which offer reflections about our ability to visualise and perceive. The objects themselves are reduced to abstracted, anonymous forms hovering in space, entirely foreign, and lacking context or function. In this book, he gathered photographs of antique cars for sale on ebay and transformed them, giving the cars parts another context and inviting us to look at these images with a different eye.