CAIRNS, Antony. LDN EI. [London]: [Self-published], [2015].

CAIRNS, Antony.
LDN EI.
[London]: [Self-published], [2015].

Customised and repurposed Kindle e-book reader (190 × 124 mm). Contains 244 black-and-white photographs, reviews of previous work, an interview with Cairns, and 2 essays by Ian Jeffrey. Power lead. Printed instructions. Printed black bubble pack sleeve.

Edition of 200. Using techniques originally devised so that viewers could read manga on Kindles and other e-book readers, Antony Cairns has hacked into the software of each device and made it possible to view the entire archive of imagery he has created for LDN, a series of photographs taken in London, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Paris, and Tokyo. In these photographs he focuses on buildings, architectural details, multi-storey car parks, underpasses, and walkways, which combine to create an accumulated nocturnal landscape. The pictures originate as 35mm transparencies, which are part-developed and then solarised before the developing process is resumed, then from inter-negatives Cairns makes contact prints, which, when exhibited are made directly onto aluminium panels, or as lith prints on paper. In addition to the modifications to the software he has also modified the outward appearance of each device.

‘[The images] have to be “made out” fathomed or figured. Stains and blurs ask to be identified or separated one from the other; and due to the unfamiliar tonal range of the images items such as bolt-heads and lights have to be discerned. There are pieces of texts, as well, which can almost be read, and they cause hesitation and strain. Thus the very decipherment of the pictures takes another kind of time and different kinds of concentration: reading of letters and fragments of words, for example, as well as testing the light – looking for significant irregularities in delicate, radiant surfaces. Thus the city with its frameworks and modules provides a setting and a foil for the kind of almost imperceptible moments in which we usually have our being’ (Ian Jeffrey).

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