The Sense of Reason
By Holly Crawford
Holly Crawford © October 2004
My Hyphens project is a participation, performance and site-specific installation. All the photographs included were taken, printed in sepia on matte paper, and collaged on-site at Photo New York. It is about connections, here and now–me to you; you to your body and memory. During the art fair, I asked people if I might photograph one of their five senses. Some people went beyond the preliminary exchange and shared a memory of that particular sense. What they told me is private, between them and me. The photographs are a fragment of that moment, a fragment of that memory. I have photographed body parts of individual people, but all the pictures are presented as a whole.
The sense–sight, smell, touch, taste, or hearing–could be the one that the participant felt was their dominant sense. Or it might be the one that he or she was most aware of when I asked them about their five senses. Consequently, what you see in the photograph may reflect a positive or negative view of that particular sense at that moment. For example, one person I photographed made fragrances. His sense of smell was very important, but another person thought of the nose because of allergy problems. There are two photographs of noses, but is that information still there? It is all now part of my memory. We connect to our world and other people through the information we receive through our senses.
This is a new performance-participation-installation project. Hyphens, is site specific and has never been done elsewhere. I photographed 80 people at Photo NY 2004. I have added another layer by having an edition of 100 boxes of the photos. Now an unknown participant may arrange and rearrange the images anyway they want. I will do another performance of this project at Miami-Basel Art Fair in early December.
