Commission: Danny Treacy research

After one of Steffi’s lecture I decided to do further research into the series ‘them’ by Danny Treacy; his photographs seem to portray figments of his imagination immortalised.

'What circus is this? What strange ghosts are they that loom out of the darkest black, the last place in our dreams? They are us and they are Them.’

He uses recovered clothes found in random places like woodland, car parks & streets which he re-stitches to construct ‘junk monsters’; this idea of someone’s waste being turned into another’s use in a distorted way could possibly reflect societies view on these themes. These items belong to the unknown & the anonymous which by reconstructing & wearing them puts himself into the closest proximity possible to them & in a way creates a final memory of them; it makes the audience wonder who the previous owner was & what they have done in the clothing. 

The clothes are distorted to mask the wearers identity creating a confined space in which he is consumed by ‘Them’, he seems both threatening & vulnerable. I like Treacy’s new meaning for the idea of a self-portrait, when thinking about old clothes in my attic I feel as if I could create a whole portrait of my family without any human presence. This faceless appearance also sparks this idea of the human form wasting away like the soul to leave a useless, wasting shell-like armour, protection from the world. I have been really inspired by the backdrop; the feeling of no scale, no perception of space. This blackness reflects the way he often recovers the garment’s components at night, mimicking the previous owner’s last memory of location associated with these clothes; as well as metaphorically representing the waste caused by materialism through faded light. 

I want to take a few of these ideas through to concepts for my final images; I really like the removal of the body as if it has faded like memory fades. I also like the black background used to isolate the subject which I could use as a way of visually separating my chosen memories & garments eg. a wedding dress; this also segregates the dress by highlighting it as a ‘one-use’ item therefore wasteful.