The Afghanistan Diaries 1970: Volume One [1]

Rachel McPherson ( 1950, New York) makes photos, paintings and films. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, McPherson investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.Her photos demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own 'cannibal' and 'civilized' selves. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, she considers making art a craft which is executed using clear formal rules and which should always refer to social reality.Her works establish a link between the landscape's reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a 'corporate world', she tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.Her works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. With a conceptual approach, her works references post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By focusing on techniques and materials, she often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.Her works are notable for their perfect finish and tactile nature. This is of great importance and bears witness to great craftsmanship. Rachel McPherson currently lives and works in Los Angeles.All pictures are taken with Topcon cameras.