Willem Popelier
01 July - 31 August 2011
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| © Willem Popelier
photo-143.jpg 11-08-09 1449, 2011 |
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Foam 3h:
WILLEM POPELIER
Showroom Girls
1 July - 31 August 2011
Photographer Willem Popelier (Eindhoven, 1982) found by accident 91
photographs and two films made by two girls on a publicly accessible
computer. This was the start of a long-running project in which Popelier
researched the role of photography on the internet and in social media.
The result is the exhibition, Showroom Girls, an intimate portrait of
one of the girls in the form of pictures and texts by her hand that
Popelier found online.
Webcam
Whilst working on another project, 'Showroom', Popelier was looking for
showroom computers which visitors use to take pictures of themselves by
using the computer's webcam. He discovered that people leave these
pictures on the computer in the shop. Popelier started to collect these
images. Photographs of anonymous people who portray themselves in the
public domain and upon occasion rather obsessively.
On one particular computer Popelier found almost a hundred pictures made
by two girls. After more research he discovered that the girls had
produced around two hundred images in almost an hour. A large number of
these shots were removed, but the girls had left a number on purpose.
One of the girls wore a necklace stating her name. Popelier started to
look for her on the internet and found both girls on various websites
such as Hyves, Facebook and Twitter. Via the internet Popelier got
access to the tweets of one of the girls, but also managed to find her
address and even her school results. And all of this he found legally,
without hacking into any secret or inaccessible data. With all the
collected material he put together the exhibition Showroom Girls.
Ethically responsible?
The exhibition in Foam questions this topical issue: what does an
internet user show of him- or herself to the world, and is this a good
or a bad thing? To what extent can an artist use and re-use this
information, and where are the ethical and legal boundaries? This debate
will be part of the exhibition. Stine Jensen, a philosopher, will write
a column in the booklet accompanying the exhibition. Before the
exhibition starts, the photographer and the curator of Foam will write a
blog about the dilemmas they faced whilst preparing this project.
Bio
Willem Popelier graduated in photography at the Royal Academy for the
Visual Arts (KABK) in The Hague in 2008. He then took an MA in
photography at the AKV St. Joost Academy in Breda, which he completed in
2010. His work has been exhibited in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Luik, Modena
and New York, and has been published in NRC Weekblad and Foam Magazine.
In 2008 he won the the public's choice award of the Steenbergen
Stipendium with his graduation project '....en Willem'. In 2010 his
series 'Rejected Identities' was nominated for the Dutch Doc Award in
the category Innovation and Experiment. This year his series '...en
Willem' has been selected for the Best Designed Books 2010, and has won
a bronze medal at the Schönste Bücher Aus Aller Welt in Leipzig. The
series has also been nominated for the Dutch Doc Award 2011.
www.foam.nl
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