Everything is Anything Else
2019 - Photography - Taylor Lyttleton
Taylor Lyttleton is a Brighton based artist whose practice includes photography, sculpture and installation. Her personal and editorial works draw interest from everyday gestures and objects, as a way to create ambiguous environments that act as a point of enquiry. Lyttleton often uses the photographic medium as a tool for critical thought, whilst engaging in the mediums historical and cultural functions.
‘Everything is Anything Else’
Text by Calum-Louis Adams
Taylor Lyttleton is a multidisciplinary artist working between both Brighton and London, UK. Her practice usually concerns the conceptual investigation of the relationship between the photograph, sculpture and space, namely through specific engagements with varied environments, material elements and even within editorial photoshoots. Everything is Anything Else (2019) is no exception to this, as various sculptural materials converge to materialise and then explore the ‘photographed subject’s’ materialism and what’s at risk in the traditional photographic process. She encourages us to doubt the assumed mode of viewing, shattering its two-dimensional plane and asks us to critically engage with the three-dimensional once again from what remains.
One way in which Lyttleton protests the ‘two-dimensional’ fate of the photograph is through her exploration of ‘traditional viewership’ when encountering photographic documentation, challenging it through the reoccurring elements in her installation and its various components. Seen here is just a small section of the wider installation, two sheets of glass, balanced against each other atop a wooden block. What’s invoked here is an important element of the presentation of photographic work- That of the frame. Traditionally, we’d view the photograph as ‘art on a wall’, posited in a glass casing for protection only. Here Lyttleton, however, wants our attention drawn away from the paper photograph, which although present, is not central- She asks instead, we turn back towards the structural composition of the framing device. This is but one of the many engaging parts of Everything is Anything Else, not only because Lyttleton encourages us to rethink what’s being viewed within the document, but also what exists extrinsically in the space that surrounds the photograph as it exists in real time, thus, uncovering the spatial duality of both site-of-investigation, and site-of-viewing.
But how can such a move invoke such a complex concept? Well, this duality is incredibly unique in Everything is Anything Else, and it’s within the multiple, open ended (de)framings that we begin to build our narratives, something left out of the traditional ‘site-of-viewing’- As often, the way the site-of-investigation is framed, purposefully encourages us to see something that the photographer wants us to see, experience pending- However, the duality, and constant back and forth between the investigative site and the viewing one due to the ‘exposed photograph’, allows for new narratives to be constructed as we come face to face with that of which should be separated from us, for viewing only- not engaging.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.
When reviewing this term ‘site-of-viewing’, I cannot help but think of Daniel Buren’s words in Reboundings, specifically this idea that ‘art’, or in Lyttleton’s case ‘the subject’ is frightened of the world at large and needs isolation in order to exist. This is an incredibly telling reflection on the market in which photography circulates but is an especially important sentiment to the work at hand. Just as Buren’s institutional critique relies on the institution, the work here recognises the importance of the site in which it is being viewed in, in that it relies on it to be conceptualised, in fact- For people will view photographs in space that exists a distance from the original site. However, whilst taking up this space, it does so unprotected, and unafraid, simultaneously allowing it to critique traditional ‘glass cased frame’ and ‘gallery wall’- The device, which is usually used as protector, is now an imperative art object in and of itself. So, what we end up asking ourselves whilst observing it is, what does the traditional use of ‘the frame’ do for viewing? and can the frame be framed as subject, or as artwork even?
On looking in closer, you might even begin to question the space itself as frame, for once that ‘frame space’ is broken down, what’s framing the image(s) now?
Lyttleton then brings us back to the investigative site by asking us to attend the newly exposed photograph, although she doesn’t let us do this empty handed. Our attention is thus turned to the stereogram, a tool used in which two of the same images are viewed through a separate view port for each eye, presenting the illusion of a three-dimensional image. This particular encounter, although itself a version of ‘framing’, is the product of an ever-curious ability that this tool has for facilitating transparency, and thus allowing the audience to see through the photograph as opposed to the typical surface level perception- Again, encouraging us to interact and even (re)construct our own relationship with what was by tricking the eye into ignoring the paper barrier, cutting through to the material nature of what’s being photographed with almost surgical precision. Then, once we are confronted with the material, we get to interact with the object as if camera ourselves, engaging with each side of the shape as we move around the viewing port with our eyes, as if face to face with the original object, and its original space.
So, although I said our attention is fixed on the newly ‘exposed photograph’, what I really should be saying is the newly exposed ‘material and its surroundings’.
One might also say this is tactfully done through an important interplay between the photographic eye and the human one, as David Campany would put it. That being, the photographic tools can process and store visual information that the human eye might miss or forget, and in exchange, the eye develops meaning overtime through its visiting and revisiting aside from ‘the cold optics of the camera’.
This inter-relational quality is emphasised in Everything is Anything Else, with particular attention paid in post-production. Lyttleton, with the help of the optical tool, enhances our ability to investigate the image, experiencing both the subject-object through the document, and alongside the document at the same time (as they are both located within the installation as a whole)- Thus, giving us more agency in the investigative process. In my opinion, this is the wonderful nature of the project- It positions itself as the antithesis of ‘cold optics’, abandoning distance for experience as we are instructed to engage with our curiosity with form, as if there with it in the moment.
And finally, as I find myself approaching the end of this essay, I find myself asking a lot of questions which I still struggle to answer. However, I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, and would argue that it’s an integral part of the work at hand. Photography and Real-Time Sculptural experience, two things considered anathema, come to us hand in hand in this work so that in time, we recognise that what’s at odd’s here is our own perceptions and as such, we naturally begin to question them. We question them to keep the subject alive through engaging, then re-engaging, framing and then re-framing, building up and then breaking down.
so, although originally conceived as a project for her Photography degree, Everything is Anything Else is a continual and elegant exploration of all considered lost in the photographic process. By ‘lost’, I really mean the sculptural ‘there’-ness to which Lyttleton throws a lifeline within her practice as a whole. Here, however, she reaches towards the materiality of the subject, which in usual terms, falls for flatness as we’d perceive the photograph from the singular angle, at odds with the dimensions of the matter photographed. Lyttleton asks us to recondition our experience of the photograph with her revival of sculptural material through installation. Inevitably, during the transference of the two-dimensional photograph to a material practice, Everything is Anything Else uncovers the existing- yet often ignored- tension between the permanence of documentation, and the forgotten temporal subjects.
Although on the surface this work is seen to tackle this age-old debate of photograph as memory, as trace and as document, it also reminds us of the camera as surgeon; Utilising the lens in collaboration with real-time sculptural elements to cut through flat remnants, to the richness of the original site-of-investigation, turning our attention to question the ‘dwindling materialism’ of those memories which, in time, will melt into sand.
Read Taylor’s essay on Calum-Louis Adams‘ work HERE.
