Take No Photographs, Leave Only Ripples

The work uses the photographic image as both its subject and media. Reid photographs advertisements, newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and found objects. The photographic finish or precision of this source material, and the attendant consumerist rhetoric, is then degraded and its meaning subverted as it is collaged together, ‘defaced’ with hand drawn marks, and eventually re-photographed and re-printed in black-white. Collage becomes a process of détournement in which the viewer is confronted with the sexualised, the vulgar and the excessive ‘substrate’ of popular imagery.

‘Take No Photographs, Leave Only Ripples’ was first exhibited in the group show ‘Karaoke - Photographic Quotes’, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. The work was included subsequent exhibitions: ‘Free’, New Museum, New York; ‘Newspeak: Contact’, International Photography Festival, Toronto; ‘British Art Now’, Saatchi Gallery, London; ‘Karaoke’, Fotohof, Salzburg (all 2010). Elements of the work are reprinted in Reid’s artists’ book project Faker Drinker Soldier Heiress, published by Bookworks, London, 2010.