In the photographic sculptures “Tools of Modernity” by Silja Yvette, black and white polystyrene panels made of recycled consumer goods rear up to form photo studio backdrops. Bent into a sloping structure, exhausted, the panels are both image and object. They display photographs featuring key elements of the photo studio and of photography, e.g. lenses, light, tripods, and mirrors. They are emblems of focus and the gaze.

The photo studio backdrop, designed as a flowing, smooth, artificial space, is a tool intended to present and idealize objects. It is the stage of photography on which objects of value are illuminated with artificial light in an uncontextualized space. It is a place that is looked at. The cavernous panel seems infinite and timeless, evoking a primal human desire to transcend time and space – a desire that drives the invention of technologies and innovation. Silja Yvette replaces the material of the sloping cove with the recycled panels, thereby pushing the material of the objects themselves into their otherwise immaterial background. Having been formerly presented on them, the camera boxes, keyboards, or refrigerators now live on in the recycled panels of the backdrop. Thus, the stage becomes the object itself and the carrier.

19 mm recycled polystyrene boards
photographic paper

19 mm recycled polystyrene boards
photographic paper