As If – Uta Eisenreich

This book of photographs is the long-awaited sequel to A NOT B (2010). Again, quotidian items are staged and captured through the unblinking eye of the camera. Yet the images are no longer set in the innocent atmosphere of the preschool years, when the world is read through analogies, but catapulted into a darker space of representation at the cusp of adolescence, against the backdrop of a hyper-commercialized world. The compositions seduce the viewer into a distinctive play with logic, language and meaning. Like protean characters in a play, objects transform from their humble selves into abstract shapes discharged of meaning or, alternately, star as products with ascribed values, advertisements for themselves charged with desire or bad omens of an ominous future. Design by Julia Born.