It's a commonly used technique in archeology and anthropology that, when exact measuring instruments are missing, objects or people are added to the image. I've collected hundreds of images through royalty-free archives that meet this subjective indication of scale. The lack of accurate measuring instruments takes away the scientific accuracy and allows you to view the images in the context of amateur photography. The objects and people that indicate the scale unintentionally become the subject. When a person is used in an image to indicate scale, this also questions the ‘raison d’être’ of the image itself. Is it a landscape or is it a portrait?
The result is a very diverse collection that shows itself as a visual essay, between unbridled art photography and pseudoscience. I considering myself working as an archaeologist-designer. Systematic and categorial, yet very personal, impulsive and intuitive. The images are ordered by relative size. The object-that-depends-scale relative to the image itself. Hereby the physically correct proportions are not respected (a hat is larger than a match) and the distance from the camera to the object / subject becomes a new scale that’s applied.
Part of Graphic Research / Archaeological Design, my master and graduation project at LUCA School of Arts.
