Fotoroman is an interactive public performance installation involving Poloroid photography. In brief, this installation focuses on the collapse of public and private space and the role of the camera in this collapse. It does so by investigating cultural associations with photography. It utilizes the intimate and personal vehicle of family portraiture and the artifacts of a family photo album to subvert a public space. In doing so the public (specifically, the corridor connecting two sections of an art gallery) is confronted and subverted by a typically personal act. At the same time, the family album that builds on the wall is corrupted with images of strangers.
The Photographer and family of actors are positioned in the corridor of a busy gallery. They set up shot after shot over a two hour photo shoot, paying no mind to the gallery patrons. It is up to the patrons to guess an appropriate time to hurry across the camera plane. Though, as the photographer pretends to tinkers with his equipment he snaps a shot as they pass through.
The photo is added to the wall and the family and photographer reset like nothing happened.
At the end of the night, the set is left empty with the only evidence of the event being the wall of "family photos"
The resulting family album of strangers. It is book ended with clean shots unaccompanied by patron intrusions. It is interesting to see in different individual frames what the camera chose to focus on and light as the dominant subject, the family or the intruding stranger.
