Louis De Belle – Disappearing Objects

Posted by Fabio 5 August 2019

Disappearing Objects is a photographic series on magician’s secret tools. These tiny artefacts, usually concealed in the magician’s hand, bear uncanny resemblance to something that is ultimately familiar – the body. A serial presentation on a stark background encourage viewers to question their own personal relationship to them. These unrecognizable things come into focus as possessing an ostensible function by way of levers, switches, small pulleys, and other minor technologies that are fused with anthropomorphic representations of body parts.

In Disappearing Objects, De Belle presents these photographs alongside a short fictional story by writer Jordan Hruska where the protagonist must confront the subjectivity that overtakes her position of material objectivity. The story explores this shift in perspective – a disassociation between a stored knowledge of the object and its representation.