Everything Is Anything Else Archive (2013)


Everything is Anything Else is a multi platform project that includes a series of editioned prints, an archive of over 500 images illustrating the extended history of these editioned works, as well as a blog and reading list. We consider this project versatile in its presentation, and it can be exhibited in a variety of configurations both on and off line.

In the beginning this project was guided by a simple notion: that every aspect of the contemporary photograph is constantly in flux. Its materiality, its indexical qualities, its context, its content, its believability, its permanence and proliferation are always in question, unstable, and subject to easy manipulation by both its producers and consumers alike. This condition has only intensified in the post-internet age. Though these conditions are frequently observed and considered by many, and many more capable than us, the goals of this project go beyond an observation or critique. As image-makers ourselves, we wanted to develop a participatory model, a process that could open up questions about what a photograph can do, how we see it, what perceptions it can cause, and what actions these perceptions can cause in turn.

We started by making quotidian images. The subject matter being essentially arbitrary, our only real desire was to make images of objects and places that would appear vulnerable: vulnerable to multiple trajectories of association, multiple interpretations, multiple lines of flight. These initial images have been circulated between us, made and remade. Each image presented here exists in flux between multiple instantiations. Each iteration contains some elements of the previous iterations, either formally or materially, while other elements have been replaced or left behind entirely. The process has become obliterative. The specific cultural information within each image has been stripped away or negated. What is left behind is a base catalyst, a fundamental interest, a visual alchemy, a map of trajectories; a synopsis of the uncanny drawn out of everyday life.