Field Of Vision: Tom Philips

Thursday, 26 August 2010

Tom Philips

Morbid, yes, but also at times hilarious, Tom Philips' Dead Photos series is an ongoing project photographing an apparently dead body in various locations around the world. Details on the series are deliberately scarce, so its hard to tell if the act of playing dead is a performance in itself at these places, but the resulting images are chilling and sometimes surreal. The figure slumped from a tree branch in San Jacinto could be a piece by an artist like Robert Kinmont or Charles Ray, but those on the rubble in Suakin or by the grey water's edge in France are more akin to troubling forensics photos.

Its interesting to see passersby's reactions in different cities: people stop and stare on The Bowery in New York, whilst they rush about their daily business in Tokyo, barely registering the prone figure in the street.