A PERFECT SENTENCE by Oliver Frank Chanarin Photo Collection

About the productJapanese

A collection of works by British photographer Oliver Frank Chanarin. In photographic encounters taken across the UK, he explores the desire for attention, the complexities of being seen, and the anxieties of being overlooked.

Throughout his long career, the artist has pushed the boundaries of the medium, questioning the dynamics of power and visibility and challenging the ethics of documentary photography. This is his first solo project since the end of his 20-year creative partnership with Adam Broomberg, and it returns to his roots: speaking to, penetrating and critiquing our lived experience through the encounter between the camera and the photograph. Inspired by novelist W. G. Sebald and photographer August Sander, the artist's photographic wanderings and experiments in autofiction deeply engage the artist's subjectivity while questioning the unstable realm of documentary photography.

Her often fringe subjects include suburban fetish clubs, crooked lawyers faking accidents, amateur theatre troupes performing in church halls, and gender activists protesting in the streets. In a country torn apart by political polarization, the isolation of a pandemic, and the weaponization of identity politics, she seeks to reconcile a sense of British eccentricity with a pressing need for new forms of expression.

Like his previous projects, this work moves effortlessly between the discipline and the accidental. Planned, institutionally-produced images give way to chance encounters with strangers and friends, deliberate and failed attempts to get lost in the world, darkroom disruptions and self-critical texts. Refusing the authority of the final image, he sometimes presents prints in the darkroom as they develop, revealing the process of corrections, re-editing and selection. At times jarring and disturbing, but mostly candid images of an idyllic English pastoral world accumulate and congeal like a mountain of buttered toast.

Chanarin explores the drive for attention, the complexity of being seen and the anxiety of being overlooked, in photographic encounters across Britain.

Oliver Frank Chanarin's practice has long pushed against the edges of the photographic medium to interrogate dynamics of power and visibility, and challenge the ethics of documentary photography. Following the dissolution of the twenty-year creative partnership Broomberg & Chanarin, the artist's first solo project returns to an origin point: using the camera and the photographic encounter to speak towards, penetrate, and critique our lived experience. Drawing as much from August Sander as WG Sebald, Chanarin's photographic wanderings and auto-fictional experiments engage with the artist's subjectivity while querying the slippery terrain of documentary photography.

Chanarin often finds himself on the margins ? from suburban fetish clubs to accident-faking ambulance chasers, or from amateur dramatics groups in church halls to gender activists protesting in the streets. In a country fragmented by political polarisation, pandemic isolation and the weaponisation of identity politics, Chanarin attempts to reconcile the eccentricity of Britishness with the pressing need for new forms of representation.

Like Chanarin's previous projects, A Perfect Sentence crisscrosses the line between discipline and chance: organized collaborative photoshoots with institutional partners give way to chance encounters with strangers and friends, missteps and wilful attempts at getting lost in the world, chaos in the darkroom, and self-critical texts. Chanarin refuses the authority of a final image, often choosing to present in-progress darkroom prints that show the processes of correction, redaction and selection, the images failing to resolve themselves. The Sisyphean and futile task of distilling a country onto the page becomes grist for the mill as Chanarin's candid images ? sometimes uncomfortable and disquieting, elsewhere bucolically British ? accrue and coagulate, like thick piled slabs of buttered toast.

Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organizations, A Perfect Sentence culminates in a series of regional exhibitions, in which the series is presented in different iterations: from framed works continuously mounted and unmounted from the gallery walls by a robotic arm trained to respond to patterns of audience attention, to a suite of screenprints, to outdoor poster exhibitions.

Product Information

release date Available now

Part numberGPHT12069W-9781912719471

Specification hardcover／240 pages／200 x 250 mm

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