CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS. Open Letter to Model No. 1740

Berlin, 29. April 2016

  Dear Model No. 1740, 

How is it that we turn to the studio now? A time to carry out an inventory, an assessment of the tools, the materials, the conditions and the contexts of our activity? Construct a place for images we do not yet know how to produce? Images in motion, between archetypes (the family, the couple, the child) that need refunctioning, and unrealizable prototypes? What’s wrong with re-distribution?

As if I told you 
The adoption of the open letter? This letter, addressed to one but distributed to a wider audience, this letter, made up of all that exists between the ceiling and the floor, between the window and the wall. (1)

As if I told you 
Not an exhibition of photographs, rather the occupation of redundant models, moving like a solvent between layers, separating the elements, a programmed freedom. As if I told you 
To focus is to assert a preference for one surface over another. For every fragment of the world, a fragment of the camera. A model is a representation of a system.

As if I told you 
She is German. She is white. She is a professional within the field of image production. She is an instrument, a medium, a figure in an equation. She is paid to produce the signs of innocence and happiness. She is a worker in a network of economies beyond her comprehension. She is an air hostess for Lufthansa. She is the Playmate of the Year. She is a worker in the domestic industry. She is the producer of family well-being. She is the provider of a good atmosphere. She creates the conditions of emotional richness. She decorates the house, prepares the meals, she produces new producers. She is a worker in the service of the smile. She is a model. She hits her marks on cue. She is four years old. Her future will unfold within a rich warm palette of Eastern desert browns, ochres, and yellows, with textures and accents provided by the dark greys and blacks of Brussels and Paris.

As if I told you 
The staging of images from everyday life, walls, cameras, children, living-room carpets, tires, and bookstore windows, all reduced to a schematic diagram. (2)

As if I told you 
To focus is to assert a preference for one surface over another. For every fragment of the world, a fragment of the camera. A model is a representation of a system.

As if I told you 
Beauty and happiness at ground level. If you have never walked barefoot in this house, in this beautiful network of communication that enables thought to have a social body, to break the solitude. Is this so private, our struggle to communicate? Is this really the way it is? Or a contract in our mutual interest? We dream as we die, alone.

Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce the Spring line… (3)



Christopher Williams