Charlotte Cory
Artist Statement
‘Cartes-de-visite', photographic calling cards, were a Victorian craze. It was called "cartomania". Millions were made and are now so commonplace discarded in junk shops they are almost worthless but can there be anything more wretched than a person proudly got up in their best bib and tucker, preserved for a posterity that is no longer interested. The fading sepia image invariably made sorrier, and more sepia, by the magniloquent claims of the photographer printed on the back - often in French to enhance the aura of artistry: "Les clichés sont conservés"; "Negatives are always kept"; "Copies may always be had". So, I asks arcastically as I peer into the picture - (who were they? why did they choose this hat, that brooch? look at the carpet, the drapery, the exuberantly painted backdrop) - where are the clichés now? How, exactly, may copies always be had?
And yet there is something sadder: stuffed animals in museums, shot long ago not on glass plates but with guns, their very bodies likewise preserved for posterity to gawk at. Where did this moth-eaten tiger sniff his last antelope, over what distant verdure did that dusty parrot flap tremulous emerald wings? One day it came to me: why not RECYCLE the dispossessed pictures and long dead creatures. Grant them all a new lease of life. Better, more colourful, more deserving than before.
